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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



TRIBLE'S SERMONS 



BEING A SERIES OF 



Practical and Doctrinal Discourses 



By J. M.~TRIBLE, 

Late Professor of New Testament Literature, and Vice- 
President of Bethany College. 



WITH A BRIEF BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR BY A. 
MCLEAN, AND AN INTRODUCTION BY J. H. GARRISON. 



"BEING DEAD, HE YET S?EMETH."-HEB. 11 : 4. 



St. Louis : . ^^ - 7 V^ L 

CHRISTIAN PUBLISHING COMPANY, 

1892. 



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[THE Lift*-** 
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Copyrighted, 1892, 

BY 

CHRISTIAN PUBLISHING COMPANY. 



CONTENTS. 



I. The Kingship of Christ . • . . . .1 

II. Faith and Hope 12 

III. The Glory of Christ 24 

IV. Principles of the Disciples .... 35 
V. Principles of the Disciples . . . .47 

VI. Against Creeds 57 

VII. Christian Stewardship 71 

VIII. Seeking the Kingdom of Heaven ... 84 

IX. Trifling with Spiritual Duty . . . .93 

X. Obedience and Assurance .... 105 

XI. Apostolic Confirmation 116 

XII. The Credibility of Miracles .... 132 

XIII. What is it to be a Disciple? .... 142 

XIV. Against Infant Baptism 150 

XV. The Perpetual Obligation of the Great Com- 
mission 163 

XVI. The Timid Woman's Faith 176 

XVII. David Livingstone — A Sermon to Children . 188 

XVIII. The Childlike Spirit 198 

XIX. The Value of Foreign Missions . . . 211 

XX. Delight in the Lord 221 

XXI. The Keflexive Eesults of Foreign Missions 232 

XXII. The Significance of the Lord's Supper . .249 

XXIII. The Unity of the Church .... 264 

(3) 



INTRODUCTION. 



No man occupies a higher office in this world than the 
minister of Christ's gospel. Viewed in the light of its results, 
no work known to men is more important than the faithful 
and efficient proclamation of the will of God to a sinning 
world. Those who tell us that the pulpit is to be superseded 
by the press have not duly considered the vantage ground 
of the former and its special function; but the press may 
greatly widen the influence of the pulpit by carrying its 
matured utterances on vital themes to a much larger number 
of persons. In this way these two great agencies may 
co-operate, as they should do, in the enlightenment and 
salvation of the world. 

"When, about one year ago, the death of Prof. J. M* Trible, 
of Bethany College, was announced, a sense of loss to the 
Church and to the cause of religious reformation was uni- 
versal among all who knew him. He had not yet reached 
the zenith of his powers, and yet his public utterances were 
marked by a maturity of thought and a purity of diction 
which gave promise of great service to the cause of Christ. 
It was a source of gratification to learn, afterwards, that he 
had left a number of sermons in manuscript, sufficiently com- 
plete to warrant their publication in book form. From these 
manuscript sermons enough have been selected for this vol- 
ume, leaving a sufficient number for other volumes if they 
should ever be demanded. In this way the living and vital- 
izing thought of our lamented brotner will continue to do its 
work among men even though he has gone to the higher 
activities of the life beyond. Being dead, he will yet speak 

(5) 



VI INTRODUCTION. 

to unborn generations, not simply by the influence of his 
godly example, as did Abel, but through these powerful and 
penetrative sermons as well. 

No careful reader of these sermons will fail to be impressed 
by their maturity of thought, their vigor of expression, their 
purity of style, their simple and logical analyses, their argu- 
mentative force, and their high spiritual tone. In them will 
be found, blended harmoniously, two qualities which some 
have thought to be irreconcilable, namely: unswerving loy- 
alty to the principles of the Reformation, to which his life 
was committed, and a broad, irenic spirit, and a Christian 
charity which recognized the true and the good wherever he 
saw it. In this respect these sermons are worthy models for 
the study of the younger men in our ministry. The man 
who identifies pugnaciousness with faithfulness to convic- 
tions, and a narrow bigotry with soundness in the faith; is 
likely to do any cause more harm than good. It would be 
difficult to find in any series of sermons a better illustration 
of the contrary truth, — that fidelity and charity are the fruit 
of the same Spirit, — than is found in these model discourses. 

In other respects than the one mentioned these sermons 
are worthy of the careful study of young preachers of the 
gospel. The habit which they show of going beneath facts 
to discover principles of action, and the application of these 
principles to our own time and environment, is a most profit- 
able one. There is, too, a spiritual insight and intuition 
about these sermons which have reminded some of the ser- 
mons of Frederick Robertson. The fervent missionary zeal 
which they manifest cannot fail to stimulate the rising tide of 
enthusiasm for missions which is one of the signs of our 
times. 

The young preacher who may be possessed of the fatal gift 
of fluency, and who is in the habit of trusting to the inspira- 
tion of the occasion for something to say, will find in the 
thoughtful sentences which make up these sermons a rebuke 
for his presumptuous neglect of hard study and patient, 



INTBODUCTION. Vll 

painstaking preparation. He cannot fail to see here, on 
every page, evidence of careful thought and investigation. 
It is this fact which gives the sermons a permanent value 
and justifies their publication in this form. 

Having had the pleasure of an intimate friendship with 
the author of these sermons for many years, and of being in 
close relation with him as a fellow-laborer during a part of 
that period, the undersigned would most heartily commend 
this volume to the Christian public, and especially to that 
brotherhood who knew and loved him best. May it serve to 
perpetuate, in a measure, the noble influence of a life whose 
duration among us seemed all too brief! 

J. H. Garrison. 

Rose Hill, St. Louis, August 10, 1892. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

John Meredith Trible was born in Dunnsville, Virginia, 
August 18, 1851. His early education was received in a 
school taught by the sainted J. T. T. Hundley. He entered 
Bethany College in 1872, and was graduated in 1875. 
Among his classmates wereE. T. Williams, E. V. Zollars, I. 
J. Spencer, T. B. Knowles, W. A. Davidson, C. T. Carlton, 
M. M. Cochran and A. B. Williams. Upon leaving college 
he entered at once upon the work of the ministry. He 
preached for the church in Norfolk, Virginia, two years ; for 
the church in Franklin, Tennessee, three years; for the 
church in Memphis, Tennessee, two years ; for the church in 
Buffalo, New York, six years; for the Central Church in St. 
Louis, Missouri, one year. Wherever he labored he built up 
the church. He widened the sympathies of his hearers, he 
raised their moral standard, he deepened their spiritual life. 
Thoughtful people were surprised and delighted with the 
originality and variety and beauty of his thoughts. It was 
not only in the pulpit that his peculiar powers were exhib- 
ited. His unpremeditated talks in the prayer-meeting, his 
addresses at the table of the Lord, his words of counsel to 
those who made the good confession, bore the stamp of his 
genius. On these occasions his fitly spoken words were like 
apples of gold in pictures of silver. In prayer he was mar- 
vel ously gifted. In the pulpit, in his home, with the sick and 
the dying, he prayed as only a few of the greatest souls have 
been able to pray. For several years he was a corresponding 
editor of the Christian-Evangelist ; one year he was office 

(9) 



X BIOGEAPHICAL SKETCH. 

editor. His expositions of the Sunday-school Lessons were 
a valuable feature of that paper. As a writer, his style was 
marked by clearness, force and beauty. The shortest para- 
graph had some happy turn of thought or felicitous expres- 
sion. He touched nothing that he did not adorn. While he 
was preaching iu Franklin, Tennessee, he was married to 
Miss Bessie Campbell. Four children were born to them — 
John, Sue, Campbell, and Bessie Graybiel. Mr. Trible was 
seen at his best in his own home. His gentleness and con- 
siderateness, his sincerity and unfeigned faith shone there as 
nowhere else. In 1889. he was selected to fill the chair of 
Biblical Literature in Bethany College on the Thomas W. 
Phillips foundation. He entered upon his duties in Septem- 
ber. He loved the place. The magnificent hills that stand 
round Bethany like sentinels, the fair and fragrant valleys, 
the shadowy waters of the Buffalo as they wander river ward 
forever, the glorious sunrises and sunsets, had an infinite 
charm for his poetic soul. He loved the old college, and 
spoke of her past with pride and enthusiasm and of her 
future with confidence. He loved the students, and felt that 
nothing was too good for them. His idea of a college was 
that it was a place to make men. The business of a teacher 
was not to impart information simply, but to call out the 
latent powers of the student, to make him think for himself, 
and to inspire him with lofty ideas. As he saw his pupils 
grow in knowledge and in reverence and in Christlikeness, 
he felt repaid for all his toil and sacrifice on their behalf. 
They were his joy and his crown. While teaching in the 
college he preached for the church. He spoke once every 
Sunday, sometimes twice. It was universally conceded that 
he was a worthy successor of the great men who filled this 
pulpit since the church was organized. In addition to his 
work as a teacher, editor, and preacher, he and Mrs. Trible 
had charge of the Ladies' Hall. The inmates and guests 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



XI 



will long remember his kindness, his courtesy, his sympathy, 
his abounding wit. In June, 1891, he was offered the Presi- 
dency of the college, but declined. He consented to serve 
as President one year. Three weeks before the session 
opened he fell sick. Physicians and nurses did all in their 
power, but in vain. He died on the 25th of September. His 
mortal remains rest in the cemetery on the hillside, near the 
graves of Thomas and Alexander Campbell, Kobert Eichard- 
son and W. H. "Woolery. His spirit is at home with the 
Lord. 

Archibald McLean. 



THE KINGSHIP OF CHRIST. 

" Blessed is the King that cometh in the name of the Lord: peace in heaven, 
and glory in the highest."— Luke 19: 38. 

This triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, as 
it is commonly and properly called, has been the 
occasion of much perplexity and no little offense. 
The point of difficulty is to reconcile this approach 
to the pomp and pageantry of earthly monarchs 
with the simplicity and humility of his own teach- 
ing and life. It was said of him by the prophet, 
" that he should not strive, nor cry, nor cause his 
voice to be heard in the streets," and that prophecy 
was fulfilled to the letter in the meek and quiet 
ministry which he spent among men. So he reveals 
that the kingdom of heaven, which he had come to 
establish, should not come with observation, with 
noise and show, with the blast of trumpets and the 
sound and fury of battle, but it should come qui- 
etly and gently, as the seed comes up out of the 
earth, and rises silently into blade and stalk and 
ear; as the leaven, which makes no sound, but 
softly and silently pervades the whole lump. So 
had been Christ's course among his countrymen. 
He made no bid for fame; he sought not the 
approval and applause of the multitude ; the shouts 

(i) 



2 THE KINGSHIP OF CHEIST. 

and plaudits of the throng were no music in his 
ears. But on the contrary he avoided celebrity ; 
he forbade the fame of his miracles to be spread 
abroad, and he often dismissed the clamorous mul- 
titude from his presence, or else lied from its loud 
acclamations and hid himself with his little band 
of disciples in the desert, in the mountain, or some- 
times in the land of the stranger and the heathen. 
Now in this act of entry into Jerusalem, which is 
accompanied with rude multitudes, and so much of 
applause and honor, it is alleged that the Master 
for once lays aside his meekness and gentleness, 
and adopts the role and state of an earthly and 
temporal sovereign. And upon this conception of 
the case there have been many and various 
attempts to explain this apparently exceptional 
and incongruous incident in the life of our Lord. 

The rationalistic and skeptical critics, notably 
Kenan, have found in this entry into Jerusalem an 
evidence of the frailty and imperfection of Jesus. 
They see here the solitary instance in his life of a 
false and sinful ambition; the one conspicuous 
example of vanity and pride, in that Jesus not only 
suffered and consented to this worldly glorification 
of himself by the multitudes, but actually desired 
it, planned for it, and received it as his royal right 
and due. Looking over the whole of his marvelous 
life, they think they find here one conspicuous 
stain of vanity on its general brightness and 
beauty. 



THE KINGSHIP OF CHKIST. 3 

Others, with more faith and more friendliness 
to Christ, but with scarcely deeper insight into his 
character, have sought to acquit Jesus of this 
apparent vanity, by charging the public and jubi- 
lant manner of this entry into Jerusalem on his 
disciples and on the multitude, and seek to show 
that he was surprised and constrained into this 
vain show of sovereignty. These seem to forget 
that this scene was all anticipated by the Master 
and provided for beforehand. It was he who bade 
his disciples to go over into the village and find the 
young ass, which they should loose and bring to 
bear him in this royal procession. And the words 
of Christ accompanying that order are very sig- 
nificant and striking : "And if any man shall say 
aught to you, as you are unloosing the ass, you 
shall answer, The Lord has need of him." There 
was, then, a divine necessity and intention in this 
procession, and it was an essential part of the 
Savior's work and mission, without the accomplish- 
ment of which he could not say, as he did say a 
few days later, "I have finished the work thou 
didst give me to do." This procession was a neces- 
sary part of the plan of Christ's redeeming work 
for man. 

Some other interpreters have sought to make it 
appear that, while Christ consented to this pa- 
geant, if it may be so called, and even ordered and 
directed it, yet he did not do it of his own choice 
and preference, but accommodated himself to the 



4 THE KINGSHIP OF CHEIST. 

crude and carnal notions of the people, asserting 
his spiritual sovereignty and prerogative in this 
gross and carnal way, because the multitudes 
would receive it in no other. He was simply driven 
to the necessity of using such means to declare his 
Kingship and authority as the people would appre- 
ciate and accept. In a word, though the means are 
not altogether consonant with the simplicity and 
spirituality of his mission, yet they will more 
readily impress and convince the people than other 
means; and so it is a case where the end justifies 
the means. 

Now all this reasoning is not only utterly 
unworthy of the name, but it overlooks or exagger- 
ates utterly the simple and unique character of 
this royal procession into Jerusalem. It is not a 
pageant ; it is not a display of earthly pomp and 
glory ; it is not an imitation, not even a feeble imi- 
tation, of the magnificence and demonstration of 
earthly sovereigns. I suppose if any royal per- 
sonage of the time, one of the Caesars for example, 
had beheld this multitudinous and disorderly pro- 
cession, a mere mob it would have been called, a 
company of peasants, men, women and children 
indiscriminately thronged together, a body which 
one centurion and his band might have easily dis- 
persed, he would have smiled at the thought of 
calling that a triumphal march, a royal proces- 
sion, the entry of a king into his capital to receive 
his throne and his crown. 



THE KINGSHIP OF CHRIST. 5 

In the first place, it was a perfectly voluntary 
and spontaneous movement on the part of the peo- 
ple. Jesus anticipated it, but he did not order it ; 
nor did he assume to direct it when it began. 
There was utterly lacking all that attempt at 
effect, that endeavor to inspire awe and fear by the 
orderly and regular array of soldiers, that ranking 
and filing of men into columns and sections, which 
makes the appearance of an army so formidable. 
We call this a triumphal entry, and so it was ; but 
how little like those splendid triumphs in which 
the conquerors and kings of that age loved to 
appear — a vainglorious display, a solid array of 
soldiery, a dense multitude of chariots and horse- 
men, a mournful march of captives, a conspicuous 
exhibition of the trophies and treasures that had 
been wrested from the power of the enemy ! This, 
too, was the celebration of a triumph ; but it was 
of a triumph that was not yet manifest — the tri- 
umph of an apparent failure ; the triumph of meek- 
ness and gentleness and love, of truth and right- 
eousness ; the triumph of suffering and death ; the 
triumph of the cross of shame over all the envy 
and malice of men, and all the malign machina- 
tions of Satan. The triumph of all this Christ 
beheld as he went on in that procession with the 
multitudes ; but saw it from afar, saw it as the 
issue and outcome of his ministry and mission on 
earth. But after all it was not such a triumph as 
would have satisfied the ambition of an earthly 



6 THE KINGSHIP OF CHRIST. 

potentate. It was a mere mingling of multitudes : 
the Galilean multitudes, who had reached the city 
the day before for the purpose of celebrating the 
great passover feast and were still encamped, per- 
haps, on the sides of the Mount of Olives, and now 
poured forth from their tents to honor the great 
prophet; the Bethany multitude, now raised to a 
high pitch of enthusiasm by the recent resurrection 
of their townsman, Lazarus, and ready to follow 
Jesus to his throne ; the Jerusalem multitude, who 
came crowding out of their gates to meet them 
— all go singing and shouting to the temple, cry- 
ing, " Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the 
Lord." And yet it was a mere popular uprising, 
which will presently subside, perhaps to appear 
against him to-morrow. 

But if we need anything further to disabuse our 
minds of the thought that this procession is a 
pageant, let us turn to Him who is the central figure 
of it all, and in whose honor it originates. Jesus 
rides into Jerusalem, not as a warrior whose hand 
rests on the hilt of a sword, often stained in the 
blood of his enemies, and which is ready to be 
drawn at any moment to strike down him who 
questions his right ; but his hands are uplifted and 
outstretched, as if in blessing. "Not on the fiery 
war-horse, or in the flashing chariot, does he come 
to his people ; but sitting on an ass, the very sym- 
bol of meekness and peace, and asserting here, as 
always in his ministry, the peacefulness and mild- 



THE KINGSHIP OF CHRIST. 7 

ness of his reign. Strange, indeed, that any should 
see in this appearance of the Master any approach 
to that pride of power and earthly glory which dis- 
tinguishes the princes of this world. 

I. Does it not appear plain, then, that this 
entry into Jerusalem is no mere show of worldly 
pride or earthly glory, but the spontaneous hom- 
age of the people on the one hand and the asser- 
tion of the meek and peaceful character of his 
kingdom on the other, and so is entirely and con- 
spicuously consistent with the whole tenor of his 
life among men ? Still, this procession and entry 
into Jerusalem has a striking and special signifi- 
cance which we must not overlook. It was the 
assertion of his kingly right ; the avowal in a most 
impressive way of what he afterwards acknowl- 
edged to Pilate, that he was the King of the Jews 
and of the world. Jesus came into the world to 
fulfill a three-fold office. He was a prophet or 
teacher to call men to repentance, to show them 
the way of salvation, and to reveal to them the 
nature and the principles of the kingdom of heaven. 

Then he was a priest, who should offer his own 
"blood as a sacrifice for the sins of the world. He 
was in himself both the priest and the victim, who 
laid down his life for the redemption of the race. 
But he was also a King, with authority to com- 
mand and power to establish and enforce his 
authority. The prophets foresaw him in all these 
offices. One foresaw him as a teacher, making the 



8 THE KINGSHIP OF CHEIST. 

highway of holiness plain to the minds of men, so 
that none need err therein ; another saw him as the 
priest, offering his own life on the cross, as a lamb 
to take away the sins of the world ; but another, 
Zechariah, beheld him as a King coming to the 
holy city, and exclaims, " Tell ye the daughter of 
Zion, Behold, thy King cometh unto you, meek, 
and sitting on an ass." It was to proclaim in a 
most impressive and unmistakable manner his 
right to rule in Israel, as well as to declare the 
character of that rule, that he made his public 
entry into Jerusalem amid the hurrahs and 
hosannas of the multitude. This was the great 
proclamation of his sovereignty, and was made so 
public and conspicuous lest his people should mis- 
take him as being only a great teacher and 
prophet, and not the King and Messiah for whom 
they looked. And this entry into Jerusalem has 
this peculiar purpose and purport, also, that it was 
Christ's last call to Jerusalem and the Jewish peo- 
ple to receive their King. Therefore, it was his 
loudest and most impressive call. As if to leave 
them without excuse for the rejection of the Son of 
God, he now proclaims his royal right in a way 
which they all might understand. And so they 
did, though they did not all consent to it. Many, 
indeed, broke into a joyous acknowledgment of 
him, saying, " Blessed be the King that cometh in 
the name of the Lord ; peace in heaven, and glory 
in the highest." Even the children in the temple 



THE KINGSHIP OF CHRIST. 9 

joined joyfully in the royal acclamation. But the^ 
rulers and leaders were resolute and relentless in 
their rejection of him, and asked that he would 
rebuke these acclamations, little conceiving that 
these simple souls were acknowledging a divine, 
a glorious truth, and that truth cannot be silenced, 
but sooner or later, and in some way or other, 
must find utterance, even if the very stones of the 
street must cry out in its behalf. 

II. I have dwelt so far on the exposition and 
explanation of this event in our Master's ministry, 
because I think it is generally not apprehended or 
appreciated by us as befits its great significance. 
Suffer me now to press, with all earnestness, its 
great practical lesson, which is, that Jesus Christ 
is not only a teacher whom we should hear, and 
a Savior, whom we should trust, but a King who 
is to be obeyed. There be many who praise 
and prize the teaching of Christ, who will neither 
trust him nor obey him. There are three moun- 
tains in which Jesus appeared in his three different 
offices while he dwelt upon earth. It was on a 
mountain, Mfc. Hermon probably, in which he 
appeared as the great Teacher, declaring to his dis- 
ciples and the multitudes the laws of the kingdom 
of heaven. It was on Mt. Calvary that he appeared 
as a Savior, giving his life as a sacrifice for the sin 
of the world. And it was on the Mount of Olives 
that he appeared as a King, claiming all authority 
and laying his commission and commands upon 



10 THE KINGSHIP OF CHRIST. 

the apostles, and through them upon all the world, 
"before lie ascended to the throne of his glory. 
Many will follow Jesus up into Mt. Hermon, and 
hear him as a teacher, and applaud his teachings, 
but will not follow him up to Mt. Calvary, and 
trust in him for salvation. But many more are 
willing to follow him to Calvary, even, and see in 
his death their own deliverance, who will not fol- 
low him into the Mount of Olives and own his 
authority as King. Even the professing ministry 
of the gospel fail to exalt Christ in all his offices. 
Some will exalt his teaching, but shun to declare 
him as a Savior, and pass lightly over his great 
sacrifice, in which the Scripture says he suffered 
the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to 
God. Then others urge his office as teacher and 
present him faithfully in his office as Savior, but 
do not press his claims as King ; do not urge his 
commandments as imperative. It often happens, 
alas ! that those passages which assert the author- 
ity of Christ, and which convey to us his com- 
mands, are shunned as if they were no important 
part of the gospel; and, indeed, as if they were 
infected with some deadly disease which made it 
dangerous to approach them ; or, as if our lips 
were polluted in quoting them. 

Now, Christ is able to save to the uttermost. 
But in order to have his salvation he must be 
accepted to the uttermost. He must be owned in 
all his offices — as Prophet, Priest and King; as 



THE KINGSHIP OF CHRIST. 11 

Teacher, Savior and Master. He must be heard, 
trusted and obeyed. We must not only confess, 
with Mcodemus, that he is the teacher sent from 
God ; and, with the Samaritans, own him as Christ, 
the Savior of the world, but we must join in the 
hosannas and acclamations of the multitudes : 
" Blessed be the King that cometh in the name of 
the Lord." For he is the author of eternal salva- 
tion to them that obey him. 



II. 
FAITH AND HOPE. 

" Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the proving of things not 
seen."— Hebrews 11: l. 

It is a matter of perplexity and distress to many 
sober and thoughtful minds, that some of the most 
common and indispensable elements of a true life 
are so difficult and apparently impossible of defi- 
nition. We all agree that faith is absolutely 
essential to a man's life. Not only the spiritual, 
but the natural man as well, must walk more by 
faith than by sight. Man's faith in his fellow-man 
is the means by which his own life is sustained. 
If we should preach a gospel of universal distrust 
among men, and get it believed, we should not 
only stop the progress of the race, but we should 
effect its ultimate and even speedy destruction. If 
some malign spirit should desire to kill off the 
human race, the shortest and simplest way to this 
end would not be to destroy the supplies of wealth, 
the accumulations of property and the stores of 
food which men have amassed, nor even to destroy 
the productiveness and fertility of the soil ; but 
simply to destroy faith in men, and put in its place 
universal suspicion and distrust. Kill man's faith 
and you have struck his death-blow. Is not the 

(12) 



FAITH AN© HOPE. 13 

great difference between savagery and civilization 
a difference of faith between man and bis fellow- 
man ? The savage tribe is utterly distrustful of its 
neighboring tribe, and so there can be no progress. 
One savage distrusts another, and so they all 
remain savages. When a savage or semi-savage 
chief visits a civilized country, the most wondrous 
thing which he beholds is this faith reposed by 
one man in another. He sees men freely trusting 
their property, their persons, their lives to one 
another without fear, and that is a far more won- 
derful thing than great ships, great cities and great 
kingdoms. 

If we consider the agricultural life of man we see 
that it must be largely a life of faith. The germi- 
nation of the seed, the nourishment of the soil, the 
orderly procession of the seasons, summer and 
winter, cold and heat, and seed-time and harvest, 
wind and shower and sunshine — these are mainly 
matters of faith. We have no assurance of them 
but the assurance of faith. We speak of the sta- 
bility of the order of nature, but that stability is 
simply a matter of faith. The fact that things 
have gone on in a certain way in the past is itself 
no guarantee that they will continue in the same 
course for the future. We believe that the sun will 
rise to-morrow because it rose to-day, but we do 
not and cannot know it. Our conviction of the 
uniformity of nature is a matter of belief, not of 
knowledge. And all that rests on that conviction 



14 FAITH AKD HOPE. 

rests on a foundation of faith and not a direct 
perception of the senses. He that sows and he 
that reaps, he that plants and he that waters, both 
walk by faith and not by sight. 

Our commercial life goes on in the same way. 
Mutual faith between man and man is its bond and 
basis. If you could destroy all our highways, and 
burn all the ships in our harbors, and cut off all 
means of communication between nations, you 
would not so effectually destroy commerce as if 
you could sow the seeds of distrust and unbelief 
among the various nations of the world. Without 
faith your ships would rot at the docks, your 
engines would rust in the round-house, and your 
great marts of trade would become a wilderness 
and a solitude. We speak of certain laws of trade 
and say, if men can conform to them they may 
hope for success. But the fundamental law of 
trade, that in which all the other laws have their 
roots, is this confidence of one man in another and 
of every man in his kind. Dig up that and the 
whole structure comes down with a crash. I need 
not carry the illustration further. Faith is the 
most omnipresent and indispensable element in 
human life. 

JSTow what we next remark in this faith is the 
difficulty of defining it perfectly. Whether we take 
the word as it occurs in our common life, or as it 
occurs in the Scriptures, no definition which we 
can give of it appears to exhaust its meaning in 



FAITH AND HOPE. 15 

every case. All translators of the Holy Scriptures, 
without exception so far as I know, have felt this 
difficulty of definition, and have rendered the origi- 
nal term, sometimes by one word, sometimes by 
another — sometimes by belief, sometimes by trust, 
sometimes by assurance, sometimes by fidelity — 
and not unfrequently have been perplexed just 
what rendering to give it. 

Let me submit two remarks on this difficulty of 
exact definition of words : 

1. It is very easy to exaggerate the importance 
of such definition. The understanding of faith has 
very little to do with the exercise of faith ; just as 
the understanding of the phenomenon of vision has 
nothing to do with the exercise of the sense of 
sight. We learn, on consulting the science of 
optics, that vision is not an immediate perception 
of the object, but a perception of the image or 
picture of the object which is reflected on the 
retina of the eye. That is, you do not see me as 
I am speaking to you, but only a very diminutive 
picture of me which is mirrored in the organ of 
vision. All you can see of me is in your eye. And 
yet you do not see me any better because I have 
defined to you the nature of sight. You exercise 
the organ just as well when you don't understand 
all the process that such exercise involves. So, if 
we were to study the lid of the eye, we should see 
that it is marvelously adapted for the defense and 
protection of the delicate visual organ. But we do 



16 FAITH AM) HOPE. 

not need to understand that in order to close the 
eyelid on the very instant that the eye is assailed. 
The bird, which understands nothing of the phi- 
losophy of vision, makes use of its eyelid as freely 
as the oculist who has perfect comprehension of it 
all. The same thing may be said of digestion. 
One does not need to understand its processes in 
order to perform them. I lived a good many of the 
happiest years of my life, and, except for an occa- 
sional repast of green apples, should never have 
known that 1 had a digestion. Certainly I have 
not had a better digestion since I have learned 
something of its laws. A good digestion does not 
depend on a man's ability to understand or explain 
it. Neither does a living and saving faith depend 
upon the believer's ability to define its meaning 
with absolute accuracy. This is why strict defini- 
tion is so rare in Scripture. 

2. Now let us remark, in the second place, the 
reasons of this difficulty of defining faith. (1) In 
the first place, human language is incapable of 
defining thought with absolute accuracy. A word 
is not the same unchanging symbol as a figure in 
the multiplication table. We take the figure four 
and it always has a definite and unchanging sig- 
nificance. Like a pint-cup, it holds so much, and 
you can put no more in it. So any other digit. 
But that is not so of a word. We cannot say that 
it contains just so much meaning in every case and 
can contain no more. It may contain more or less 



FAITH AND HOPE. 17 

according to the connection. Thus the word 
'•man "—how much that word may mean or how 
little ! And whether much or little depends upon 
its connection. A man may be a mere biped, a 
two-legged animal, more beastly in his appetites 
and more ferocious and brutal in his disposition 
than other animals, differing from them more in 
form than in fact ; or he may be a son of God, who 
reflects his Father's image and imitates his char- 
acter. And whether the word means this or that, 
we must determine by the connection in which it 
occurs. Now faith may be the act of an angel or 
a devil ; for the devils believe and tremble. And 
we must look to the context to see whether the 
faith described is divine or diabolical. Certainly 
we should not submit the word itself to a thumb- 
screw process in hope of extorting from it in every 
case an invariable meaning. 

(2) Another reason of the difficulty of defining 
faith lies in its very nature. Faith is an act of the 
mind, and mind itself is, in its last analysis, a 
mystery. I spoke a little while ago about defining 
digestion, but every intelligent man must know 
that digestion has not been defined. We can state 
some of its laws and describe some of its processes, 
but the thing itself remains inscrutable. It is a 
vital process. The powers of digestion are living 
powers. And hence, to understand digestion, would 
be to understand life, which no man has been able 
to understand. In answer to the question, " "What 



18 FAITH AND HOPE. 

is life ? " all science is dumb. In like manner we 
cannot define sight, because we cannot understand 
it. We know something about it, that an image 
is made, that the mind perceives the image ; but 
what is the nature of that act of perception, what 
is the subtle connection between the material 
image and the immaterial mind, we do not know 
that. And we shall never define vision until we 
are able to define mind. Just so, because faith is 
an act of the mind, it must partake somewhat 
of the mystery which belongs to the mind itself. 

Let none of us refuse to believe, therefore, 
because we cannot define, in all its length and 
breadth and height and depth, the operation of 
faith. We may as reasonably refuse to think, 
because the process of thinking in some respects 
passes all our understanding. We may believe, to 
our eternal salvation, without being able to com- 
prehend all that may be involved in the exercise 
of faith. 

It is not a perfect definition of faith which is 
presented to us in this text, when we are told that 
faith is " the foundation of things hoped for, the 
conviction of things not seen." It is simply the 
presentation of one of the aspects of faith, faith in 
its relation to the future, faith as the ground of 
hope. Had it been the purpose of the apostle to 
describe the relation of faith to the truth, he would 
not have called it a foundation, but a superstruct- 
ure. Faith rests on truth ; hope rests on faith. All 



FAITH AND HOPE. 19 

the examples cited in this context illustrate this 
aspect of faith — faith as the foundation of hope. 
Abel had only a hope of righteousness, of accept- 
ance, when he brought the firstlings of his flock to 
the altar. The foundation of that hope was faith 
in the mercy of God. Noah, in building the ark, 
had only a hope of deliverance from the flood. 
Abraham, in leaving Mesopotamia, had only a hope 
of Canaan. In each case the hope rested on faith 
in the promise of God ; and in each case the hope 
was realized, and passed out of anticipation into 
experience. 

Let me urge, then, for the rest of this sermon, 
two points : (1) The great practical and indispen- 
sable value of hope as an element in Christian 
life ; and (2) the great need of faith as the founda- 
tion of hope. 

1. I think that one of the texts which we ought 
to engrave on our memories and meditate in our 
hearts, is those words of Paul in the eighth chap- 
ter of Romans — "We are saved by hope." In 
church life, in Christian life, in all life, that is a 
capital truth. It is the hopeful spirit that wins. 
That is demonstrated in all directions. If you con- 
sult the statistics of commerce, you will find that 
the very first condition of success is the well- 
grounded hope of success. Not business talent, 
not frugality and industry, not propitious circum- 
stances, but before all these, it is the hope of vic- 
tory, which makes the whole manner of the man 



20 FAITH AND HOPE. 

confident and assuring. It is so in raising a fam- 
ily. If parents are hopeful of a prosperous future 
for their children, if, instead of predicting that they 
will be in the poor-house or the penitentiary before 
they are of age, they reckon on the success of their 
children, and speak to them in the language of 
encouragement and enthusiasm, then they are most 
likely to succeed in that most difficult task which 
God has given to man — to train up a child in the 
way he should go. There are cases recorded where 
men have been on the very verge of failure, and 
have been saved by the revival of hope. A certain 
banker tells it of himself, that in the great panic 
of '73, he had given over all hope of surviving the 
shock and strain of those dread months, and was 
calmly waiting his failure, as a foregone conclu- 
sion. Chancing to be in New York city, he fol- 
lowed the crowd to hear one of the great preachers 
of the metropolis. The preacher's theme was, " The 
Duty of Hopefulness," which he urged so earnestly 
and so cunningly, that the banker found himself 
looking at the bright side of his case, and came 
forth from that sanctuary as one who had drunk 
afresh of the waters of life. He returned to his 
distant home, resolved to be hopeful. He deter- 
mined to look, chiefly at least, at the favorable 
signs. His whole manner changed. He began to 
go back to his work with his old-time heartiness 
and cheer. His employes and associates saw the 
change, and caught some of his confidence. And 



FAITH AND HOPE. 21 

the bank was saved. That man declares to this 
day that this sermon on Hope was worth more to 
him and his depositors than a deposit of a hundred 
thousand dollars. "We should think it a great gain 
to this church if to-day we might see some one 
come among us who would bring with him a half- 
million or a million of dollars which he solemnly 
and publicly promised to use as a steward of the 
Lord. But it will be a ten-fold greater gain if we 
can inspire our hearts with a confident and jubi- 
lant hope. We are saved, not by wealth, not by 
numbers, not by intelligence — " We are saved by 
hope." It is not the gifted preacher who succeeds, 
nor the mediocre man who fails. He fails who 
preaches the gospel of despair, however eloquently; 
and he succeeds who preaches the gospel of hope, 
however plainly. " Why art thou cast down, O my 
soul, and why art thou disquieted within me? 
Hope thou in God. For I shall yet praise him who 
is the health of my countenance and my God." He 
who sings that song of hope in the desert shall 
surely sing the song of triumph in the city of God. 
2. And now a few words to the other point: 
Faith is the root and the spring of hope. If you 
want to have hope, you must have faith. You can 
have no hope of a man till you have faith in him. 
I once visited a man who had been put in jail at 
the instance of his wife. He was so abusive and 
violent in his hours of inebriation that it was per- 
ilous to have him in the house. When I visited 



22 FAITH AND HOPE. 

Mm, he professed deep penitence and an earnest 
desire to be reconciled to his wife, beseeching me 
to intercede for him. But she was obdurate. She 
had no hope of his reformation, because she had no 
faith in him. How could she have hope when she 
had no confidence, in him ? I could not dispute 
that reasoning. Faith is always the foundation of 
hope. "Then," said I, "you think your husband 
is totally depraved; there is nothing in him in 
which you can put any dependence; his whole 
nature is just like a tree— dead and rotten, root 
and branch ; whatever limb you lay hold on, breaks 
as you put your weight on it ? " This was almost 
too much for her. " JSTot quite so bad as that," she 
said, coloring and resenting my words somewhat. 
" He has one good thing about him ; he is truthful. 
When he has been drinking, he does not deny it ; 
when he has spent my money for liquor, he don't 
disown it when I charge him with it. He never 
deceived me." " Well," I returned, " there is some- 
thing on which your faith can build, and on which 
hope can rest. A man that tells the truth is not 
past all hope of reformation. And more than that, 
remember that your hope of your husband's refor- 
mation does not rest on your faith in him alone ; 
but he professes also to believe in God, and to 
have turned to him in repentance. When you 
have faith in him, and both have faith in God, who 
has said, 'He that cometh unto me, I will in no 
wise cast out,' that surely is a faith broad enough on 



FAITH AND HOPS. 26 

which to build a blessed hope of reformation and a 
new life." I wish I could tell you that the sequel of 
this justified my words, but those two have long 
since disappeared from my knowledge; whether 
they have continued steadfast or drawn back to 
perdition, I know not. 

But of this we may be sure : x Jesus Christ is the 
world's only hope — the only hope of reformation 
from sin ; the only hope of a true and worthy life ; 
the only hope of redemption from the grave and 
immortal blessedness beyond. This is the strong 
consolation of those "who have fled for refuge to 
lay hold on the hope set before us, which hope we 
have as an anchor to the soul, both sure and stead- 
fast, and which enters into that within the veil." 



III. 
THE GLOKY OF CHRIST. 

This beginning of his signs did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested 
his glory; and his disciples believed on him.— John 2: 11. 

What is this glory of Christ, which here at Cana 
he begins to manifest? Or, to get at the answer to 
this question in a larger way, What is the signifi- 
cance of the word glory in general ? We should 
say first, perhaps, that which is bright or shining, 
as the glory of the sun, the glory of the moon, the 
glory of the stars; and one star differs from 
another star in glory. But what makes the sun, 
the moon and the stars to shine, and to shine with 
differing glory ? Our Heavenly Father makes his 
sun to shine on the evil and the good. They 
shine, because it is their nature to shine. They 
were created for this purpose. Glory, then, has 
respect to essential nature. The glory of a thing 
is that which constitutes its real nature, and with- 
out which it must cease to exist. 

Thus the glory of our system is the sun. Take 
that away, and our system ceases to be. The 
glory of the sun is its power to shine. When it 
ceases to shine, it ceases to be a sun. So the moon 
or the star is moon or star no more, if it ceases to 
shine. Thus the glory of mankind is their reason. 

(24) 



THE GLORY OF CHRIST. 25 

Without this they become as irrational cattle. 
Thus, again, as the apostle teaches, the glory of a 
man is his strength. Bodily strength enters into 
our idea of manhood, or it should. Intellectual 
and moral strength, energy, boldness, power of 
aggression or resistance — these are the glory of a 
man, because they make up his essential nature. 
Without them a man is not a man. So the glory 
of a woman is her modesty — the hair is the cover- 
ing and sign of modesty is the apostle's meaning — 
and those other virtues and graces — delicacy, meek- 
ness, patience, kindness and faith — which really go 
to make up modesty — these are woman's ornament 
and glory ; and to the extent that she lays aside 
these and becomes masculine in her ambition and 
attainments she unsexes herself, ceases so far to 
be a woman, and loses the glory, because she has 
lost the essential nature and character of her sex. 

Now this, I take it, is what the apostle means 
when he tells us that Christ manifested his glory 
in this miracle at Cana ; he flashed forth what was 
his true nature and real character. Then it 
appeared, for the first time, that he was not what 
he appeared in the eyes of men to be — a mere man 
as other men. But his Messianic majesty shone 
forth in this miracle, so that the disciples were 
able to discern in him more clearly than ever 
before the long-expected Messiah and deliverer of 
the world. 

The glory of Christ is the essential being of 



26 THE GLORY OF CHRIST. 

Christ, that which distinguishes him from every 
other being, that without which there could be no 
Christ. 

This glory, as here manifest, consists in two 
things, a glory of being — or, speaking less correctly, 
of nature — and a glory of character. Let me make 
this distinction between being and character stand 
out by illustration : You say of a certain moving 
object, which you descry- — it may be in the midst 
of the waters, appearing as a mere piece of drift in 
the midst of the furious waves — " It is a man." In 
that statement you assert being or nature. You 
mean it is not a marine or a land animal, nor is it 
a piece of drift-wood, but it is a human being, a 
man. But if by further use of your eyes or your 
glass you discover that this man is trying to rescue 
another, and that with great courage and skill, and 
at great peril of his life he is steadily drawing the 
other to a place of safety, then you exclaim, 
" Brave man, good man, noble man!" That is, 
you assert character. You not only see a human 
being, but one of noble character. 

This miracle showed the eternal, uncreated being 
of Christ. This is not the beginning of his divine 
being. It was not that he was christed or clothed 
upon with this nature now, or recently. This was 
the beginning of his miracles, but he himself had 
no beginning. He was in the beginning. The 
miracle was the manifestation of his glory. It was 
as if the sun was enswathed in a sphere of thick 



THE GLOEY OF CHEIST. 27 

cloud through which it now and then made a rift 
and flashed forth or manifested its glory. The 
glory did not begin with the manifestation. It 
began with the sun. It was here at Cana that 
there shone forth for the first time that manifest 
glory of Christ which in so many and so great 
miracles was revealed throughout his ministry, and 
in the contemplation of which the disciples were 
brought to confess, in the words of Peter, " Thou 
art the Christ, the Son of the living God." It was 
the beginning of that self-revelation of Christ, 
which was continued in many mighty works, and 
consummated in his resurrection and ascension 
into glory. The apostle, looking back through all 
that long vista of signs and miracles, whose pur- 
pose he now so well understood, declares that it 
opened at Cana of Galilee. There Christ's true 
and eternal glory began to appear. And this is 
why we rest our case on Christ with so much con- 
fidence. He is God manifest in the flesh, and is, 
therefore, able to save unto the uttermost all those 
that come unto God by him. In him is the 
strength of the eternal God. 

But here is manifest, not only the glory of 
Christ's eternal being, but also his eternal and 
divine character. He is the manifestation not only 
of eternal existence, but eternal wisdom and grace. 

Observe, for example, his divine patience. 
He had been before conscious — I cannot say 
how long — of his divine being and power. He 



28 THE GLORY OF CHRIST. 

*, 

knows the glory which belongs to him, but he 
knows also that the hour to manifest it has not 
yet come, and he is content to wait. Therein he 
reveals the patience and long-suffering of God. 
God has gone on in his work with a kind of 
infinite leisure and self-control. Six days were 
taken to create the world, which might have been 
spoken into existence and order in a moment, and 
each day, we have come to believe, was an age. So 
God has been patient with man. How long he bore 
with the perverse and rebellious ways of Israel ! 
How he bears with the selfish and godless ways 
of this present age ! But in due time he will man- 
ifest both his power and his glory. Christ mani- 
fests the patience of God. He knows how to wait 
until his hour is come. Ambitious men push 
themselves into publicity and power before they 
are ready for it, and with a passionate haste, rush 
to an untimely work. The result is always fail- 
ure. Blessed is he who can bide his time, and 
wait till his hour comes ; for he partakes of the 
divine nature. 

Now, what is the secret of this impatience and 
hurry to bring one's powers into prominence ? Is 
it not vanity and pride ? It is not so much the 
desire to bless men by a beneficent and kindly 
use of their gifts, as to use those gifts for their own 
honor and aggrandizement. Like Samson, they 
are conscious of great powers, and like him, 
instead of using them on proper occasions and to 



THE GLORY OF CHRIST. 29 

worthy ends, and after patient discipline, they 
use them rashly and frivolously, and to their own 
destruction. This beginning of Christ's miracles 
suggests the patience of Christ in not beginning 
his miracles until his hour had come. 

Christ here manifests also the glory of the divine 
sympathy with men, not only in their sorrows, but 
in their joys and festivities. 

So far the revelation which God had made to 
men was necessarily a one-sided and imperfect 
revelation. God had manifested in the law and 
in the prophets, and even in the ministry of John 
the Baptist, his divine holiness and hatred of sin. 
His servants had separated themselves from the 
world as from a thing wholly polluted and unclean. 
John the Baptist, the last of his messengers, had 
held himself aloof from men. He made his home 
and performed his ministry in the wilderness, 
compelling such as would hear his message to 
leave the haunts of men and come out into the 
desert. Now all this is necessary. Sin is the 
abominable thing which God hates, and men must 
know this, and renounce all fellowship with it. 
For all it is only one side of God's character, the 
darker side. Christ is come to manifest the glory, 
not only of divine holiness, but of divine love. He 
does not dwell apart from men ; he mingles with 
the common lot and common life of men. He eats 
and drinks with them and keeps their continual 
company. 



30 THE GLOEY OF CHRIST. 

We have made much of the sympathy of Christ ; 
but it is of sympathy with our sorrows rather than 
our joys. We know he was a man of sorrows, and 
acquainted' with grief, and in time of temptation 
and distress we easily turn to him for comfort. 
We do not so easily turn to him for sympathy in 
our joys, unless, indeed, they be what we call 
spiritual joys, that is, joys connected entirely with 
the spiritual victory over the flesh. As to our 
common joys, we suppose that he takes no interest 
in them other than to tolerate them as something 
wholly of the earth earthy, or else to look on them 
all with a cold eye of disapproval. 

Kemember, then, that Jesus began his ministry 
at a marriage, not at a funeral. The joys and fes- 
tivities of that occasion were matters to which he 
was neither hostile nor indifferent. Let us put the 
scene before us for a moment. The custom was 
such as this : The center of festivity is at the 
house of the bridegroom or his father, as the case 
may be. The bride and groom spend the day 
separately in confession of sin, and the observance 
of certain religious rites. As evening comes on 
the friends and relatives of the bride lead her 
forth in her bridal array and with garlands of 
flowers to the bridegroom's house. Torches or 
lamps precede the company. Music breaks forth 
on every side — music from the band of musicians 
who have been provided for the occasion, and 
songs from the virgins who stand along the 



THE GLORY OF CHEIST. 31 

streets to yield honors to the bride. As the bridal 
party draws near, the bridegroom comes forth to 
meet them, when a solemn ceremony commemo- 
rates the union, and the wedding feast, to last 
three days, or more usually seven, begins, through 
all of which joy and merriment prevail. Christ 
stood in the midst of all this, for what purpose ? 
Not to bear witness against it, not to frown 
upon it, but to sanction it and make it the occa- 
sion of the opening of his joyful ministry. The 
joy of the bride and the bridegroom, the joy 
of the friends and relatives, the joy of the happy 
guests — he enters into all and sympathizes with 
all. And when that joy was about to be cut short 
by the failure of the supply of wine, he, mindful 
of the embarrassment and disgrace which it must 
bring to the host, and also of the discomfort and 
scandal it must create, interposes to supply the 
deficiency by his miracle of turning water into 
wine. Wine had not then, as it has now, become 
so generally associated with excess and riot that 
he might not do that with propriety. The light 
wines of Palestine are said to be hardly more stim- 
ulating than coffee. This miracle lends no aid to 
those who abuse the gifts of God, either by using 
them to excess, or using them in any wise when 
their use confirms others in the power of an evil 
habit. The general and habitual use of wine in 
our age would certainly lead to results which did 
not follow its use in the days of Christ. And so 



32 THE GLOET OF CHEIST. 

we abstain from it, not as from something sinful 
in itself j but which has become a stumbling-block 
to the sobriety of others. And, no doubt, if Christ 
were on earth now, performing his mighty works, 
the same desire for the welfare and happiness of 
men which made him turn water into wine, would 
now make him turn wine into water. So long as 
wine is a blessing rather than a bane, he would 
turn water into wine ; but when the blessing is 
turned into a curse, he would turn the curse back 
into a blessing by changing the wine back into 
water. In all this let us be sure of one thing, 
Christ's unchanging sympathy with men, both in 
their sorrows and in their joys. He is our Friend 
no less at the festivities and rejoicings of the mar- 
riage than in the solemnities and lamentations of 
the funeral. The church is not, or it should not 
be, a funeral procession. It may be more fitly 
described as a bride going forth in joyous antici- 
pation to meet the bridegroom. 

And this is a part, an essential part, of the glory 
of Christ, his sympathy with the whole life of men. 
He sanctifies our sorrows and increases and en- 
nobles our joys. He dignifies all our duties and 
lightens all our burdens. There is not a worthy 
impulse that springs up in our hearts, but that he 
knows it altogether, and shares it to the utmost. 
This is the surpassing glory of Christ's sympathy, 
that it compasses our whole nature, taking in 
every grief and every gladness. 



THE GLORY OF CHRIST. 33 

This, then, is the glory of Christ : his glorious 
being and glorious character. He is the visible 
image of the invisible God ; he is God made man- 
ifest in the flesh ; he works in the divine power 
and majesty. And yet his omnipotence is swayed 
by his love. He is full of sympathy for men's 
joys and compassion for their griefs. He is 
able to save all, and to save them to the utter- 
most. 

When the disciples beheld that glory they be- 
lieved on him, more confidently, more implicitly 
than before, and so became more his disciples. 
They saw how worthy he was to be their Master, 
and they followed him with greater fidelity. 

What they saw is now, by the gospel, declared 
to us all, and declared more fully than they then 
perceived. Through faith we all may behold the 
the glory of God shining in the face of Jesus 
Christ. That glory which began to be manifest at 
Cana now shines forth before our eyes. The gos- 
pel of Christ is the manifestation of the truth — it 
is the shining forth of this great truth, Christ is 
able and willing to save, and as such it commends 
itself to every man's conscience in the sight of 
God. We may refuse to behold this glory 
through unbelief or disobedience. This glory may 
be to some of you a hidden glory. But hear the 
words of the apostle : "If our gospel be hid, it is 
hid to them that are lost ; in whom the god of this 
world hath blinded the minds of the unbelieving, 



34 THE GLORY OF CHRIST. 

that the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, 
who is the image of God, should not dawn upon 
them." Let not the evil one blindfold us and lead 
us away from the glory of God into utter and 
everlasting darkness. 



IV. 
THE PRINCIPLES OF THE DISCIPLES. 

"Now I beseech you, brethren, through the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you ; 
but that ye be perfected together in the same mind and in the same judg- 
ment."— l Cor. 1: 10. 

I desire to state to-day, as compactly and clear- 
ly as possible, the leading principles of the work 
in which we, the religious people now generally 
known as Disciples, are engaged. I state these 
principles not only for the benefit of such persons 
here to-day as may stand apart from this work, 
are more or less strangers to it, that they may 
desire a fuller knowledge of it, but especially also 
for the benefit of ourselves. There are many 
young people in our churches who have not had 
the same reason and opportunity to get acquainted 
with these principles as their parents had, and 
whose conception of it must needs be more or less 
vague and fragmentary. There are many people 
also who have been drawu to us not so much by 
our peculiar plea as by other worthy and excel- 
lent reasons. And I am afraid, also, that there are 
others who think they understand these princi- 
ples, and are swift to condemn all who differ from 
them as recreant to the principles of this reforma- 
tion, but who, in spite of all, have mistaken them, 

(35) 



36 THE PRINCIPLES OF THE DISCIPLES. 

and are themselves the unconscious enemies of 
reformation. 

These principles, I maintain, whether we con- 
sent to them or not, are not hard to be understood. 
In the first place, there is no authorized state- 
ment of them. They have never been gathered 
into a creed and sent forth with the seal and 
authority of those who propounded them or of the 
body of those who accept them. Neither is there 
a set of men appointed guardians and oracles of 
these principles, so that their statement of them is 
final and beyond appeal. There be some who 
essay this office, but they do it without authority, 
and their expositions of our principles are en- 
titled to no more weight or warrant than any other 
man's, that is, to only so much as the reason and 
facts in the case allow. 

Now this might seem, at first view, to make it 
difficult to understand the principles of our work. 
Authorized statements are supposed to give clear- 
ness and finality to the principles which they 
embody. But, in the first place, there will always 
be a conflict of authority. If one man can claim 
to make an authorized statement, another may as 
well make the same claim ; and if the statements 
of these two men differ, then not clearness, but con- 
fusion, is the result. And as a matter of fact and 
of history, the authoritative statement of princi- 
ples has not ended all controversy concerning them, 
but has rather aggravated controversy. There 



THE PEINCIPLES OF THE DISCIPLES. 37 

would hardly be so much difference of opinion as 
to the fundamental principles of Christianity if 
creed-makers and councils had not taken it upon 
themselves to put forth authoritative statements 
of what these principles are. Statements of these 
principles are right and necessary, but no man has 
the right to set upon those statements the seal of 
authority, and say that difference from them in 
any particular is heresy. This is to bring the 
principle into controversy and thence into obscur- 
ity. 

Neither are these principles a matter of philoso- 
phy. All questions of mere philosophy are more 
or less difficult of understanding. But a man may 
hold to the principles of the Disciples and know 
nothing of philosophy or theology. They are 
principles of practical, not of speculative thought. 
It was not the design of the reformation to pro- 
pound a new philosophy or new theology, but to 
emphasize certain things which are obvious to the 
common mind and applicable to common life. 

The principles of our reformation are a matter 
of history. They may be judged by the general 
impression which they have made on the mind of 
the age and by the results they have wrought in 
•the world. After all, the great expounder of prin- 
ciples is history. A man's principles are not 
always what this or that man, friend or enemy, 
may say they are ; not altogether what he says 
they are ; but what they are shown to be in their 



38 THE PRINCIPLES OF THE DISCIPLES. 

historic development. The principles of the Dis- 
ciples are a matter of history ; and we all may 
turn to that and judge for ourselves. And if we 
would turn to this history instead of blindly scoff- 
ing the expositions of this or that man, we should 
soon be delivered of all serious misapprehension 
concerning them and of the differences and con- 
tentions to which these misapprehensions give 
rise. 

The witness of history to the principles of the 
Disciples is, lirst of all, this : that all the princi- 
ples of the Disciples originated in this simple 
conviction, that the division of the church into 
sects is an evil and a sin. I can not stop to tell 
you how gradually the fathers of this reformation 
came to this conclusion ; how they concluded first 
that sectarianism was a sin ; that bigotry, intoler- 
ance, envy among the various sects, was a sin, 
and how some of them labored to promote more 
friendly and amicable relations among the denom- 
inations. It is enough to know that their labors 
in that direction, while most acceptable to the 
best people in every sect, really stirred up the 
spirit of persecution against them and seemed, on 
the whole, to increase rather than to abate the 
bitterness and intolerance of sectarianism. 

From this conviction of the evil of the sectarian 
spirit they advanced another step. They came to 
believe that the division of the church into many 
denominations was an evil. They did not yet 



THE PRINCIPLES OF THE DISCIPLES. 39 

hold that all denominational divisions were wrong. 
They thought only that there were too many of 
them. Thomas Campbell therefore did his first 
work for Christian union within his own denom- 
ination. He was a Scotch Presbyterian. And the 
Presbyterian Church of Scotland was divided 
then, as it is to a little less extent yet, into a mul- 
titude of smaller sects, each more or less hostile to 
every other. His first endeavor, both while in the 
old country and after he came to America, was to 
unite the many feeble and scattered flocks of his 
sect into one fold. There was a similar effort at 
unity within the other great denominations, going 
on at the same time. These endeavors to unite 
those who wore the same general name and ac- 
knowledged the same general standards of doc- 
trine, were, on the whole, fruitless. 

At last those men came, as by a sudden step, to 
the broad ground that all division and all denomi- 
nationalism is wrong. Not only should there be 
no divisions within denominational lines, but these 
lines taemselves cut right through the law of 
Christ, and should be removed. Then came the 
tug of war. There were multitudes who united 
with them to deplore the sectarian spirit; there 
were many also who were convinced with them of 
the evil of so many sects and so many divisions 
within the great sects ; but when they advanced 
one step further, and proclaimed all division and 
every denomination a sin before God and a stumb- 



40 THE PRINCIPLES OF THE DISCIPLES. 

ling-block to the world, they found themselves a 
small company arrayed against the whole religious 
world. It was in this conviction that denomina- 
tionalism itself is an evil, and with this watch- 
word, "Let there be no divisions among you," that 
the reformation began, and here is the fountain 
of all its principles. 

Now let us have this position of the Disciples 
stated fully, because it is much misunderstood 
both by friends and foes. In the first place, you 
observe, then, that sweeping and radical as their 
position was and is, it was by no means a whole- 
sale and indiscriminate condemnation of existing 
Christianity in all respects. It was a condemnation 
of its divisions and of everything which carried 
in it the seeds of division. These reformers, who 
were neither bigots nor simpletons, who were men 
of heart and brain, did not account the church as 
a thing extinct. They did not say that after 
eighteen hundred years Christianity was a failure, 
and that the sects are all utterly without Christ 
and without hope. They would have counted it 
blasphemy to say that they and their little follow- 
ing constituted the church, and that all the rest of 
the religious world was lost. They did not once 
dream that in any future time, and far less within 
less than twenty years after they were dead, men 
would rise up and declare in their name, that they 
and their followers were the true church, and that 
all the rest of mankind were in the gall of Mtter- 



THE PKINCIPLE8 OF THE DISCIPLES. 41 

ness and the bond of iniquity. They did often 
scorn such an imputation ; and one of them, the 
greatest and most illustrious of them all, denned a 
Christian to be " one who believes that Jesus 
Christ is the Messiah, and obeys him in all things, 
according to the measure of his knowledge of 
his will." If a man must believe that there are 
no true Christians outside of that body of people 
to which he belongs, let him believe it. But let 
him not suppose that this horrible belief is any 
part of the principles of the Disciples. They have 
repudiated it from the first, and their plea and 
work had their origin in the conviction that there 
are thousands and thousands of Christians in all 
denominations who should not be divided by any 
party lines, and whom they have set out to make 
one. There may be those among us who suppose 
that the Disciples, and they alone, are the true 
church and people of God, but though among us 
they are not of us, and sooner or later they must 
either change or go out from us. They have missed 
the meaning of this movement. They need to re- 
view its history from the beginning. 

They will see then that the men who began this 
reformation did not intend a separate movement. 
They were not seceders. They did not draw out of 
their own accord from the sects to which they be- 
longed. They were driven out. They hoped to 
reform the church of its divisions without forming 
another sect. They desired to remain within the 



42 THE PRINCIPLES OF THE DISCIPLES. 

denomination and reform it from within. They 
only withdrew when they were given to under- 
stand that they must either cease to denounce 
division and urge union, or get out from the sect in 
which they were. They were compelled to choose 
Tbetween stifling their convictions in an ignoble 
silence and coming out from those- who justified 
division. So their separate existence was not a 
matter of preference, but of necessity. They did 
not leave the denominations because they thought 
them so far reprobate and apostate as to have lost 
all right and claim to be called Christian, and 
therefore unworthy of their company. They left 
them because they could not be suffered to main- 
tain their convictions among them. 

The first principle of the Disciples, in order of 
time, if not in order of importance, is the essential 
and visible unity of the church, and the conse- 
quent evil of dividing the church into denomina- 
tions. The evil of denominationalisn is a cardinal 
principle among us. One who doubts or disbe- 
lieves that, must feel his sympathy with us weak- 
ening. If I thought the division of Christians into 
sects a good and desirable thing, the normal and 
natural condition of the church, I should never 
preach for you again. I should go among those 
who justify these divisions. But I believe with all 
my heart that denominationalism is an evil which 
ought to be destroyed. I believe it is a violation 
of God's Word, a necessary narrowing and dwarf- 



THE PRINCIPLES OF THE DISCIPLES. 43 

ing of the faith, the sympathies, and the character 
of the church, and an offense and scandal to the 
unbelieving world. And I feel myself bound by 
every law of truth and conscience and sound 
reason to oppose it, however little that opposition 
may seem to effect. Paul said to the church in 
Corinth, not to the church on this or that street in 
Corinth, but to the whole church, that is to say, to 
all the Christians in that great city, "Let there be 
no divisions among you." And the same reasons 
for the union of all Christians in Corinth, hold 
good for the union of Christians in every place 
throughout the world. 

Are there any signs of the disappearance of 
divisions in the church and its practical and visi- 
ble unity before the world ? The signs are not so 
hopeful as they may at first appear. There is in- 
deed a sentiment in favor of union which makes 
itself manifest in many ways. But so far this 
sentiment remains a sentiment. It takes on no 
practical form. It evaporates in fine speech. It 
comes to nothing definite. And even this senti- 
ment is confined to a few of the leaders of the 
church. The great multitude of preachers are 
either indifferent or hostile to any practical union 
of the church. Most of them still justify denomin- 
ationalism as a divine arrangement, a device of 
God's providence for the better accomplishment of 
his work. The most discouraging aspect of the 
question lies in this opposition of the pulpit to 



44 THE PRINCIPLES OF THE DISCIPLES. 

the unity of the church. This opposition is not 
very rational. It is not even plausible. But it is 
outspoken and determined. 

There are, on the other hand, signs of hope. 
Whatever may be the feeling of the pulpit, the 
feeling of the pews is towards unity. As is so 
generally true in matters of religion, the people 
are in advance of their leaders. The average lay- 
man does not know the difference between his 
church and the church of his neighbor. And when 
he knows it he does not regard it of any conse- 
quence. The people, by a large majority, would be 
ready for some practical unity to-day, if the 
preachers were ready. 

Then, there are certain changes going on in the 
church which all tend towards the church's union. 
The theology of the church is changing. It is, for 
one thing, more irenic, that is, more peaceful. 
Polemics are less in fashion. Belligerency has lost 
its power. Men still discuss their differences, but 
they do it in a better spirit and with a better 
motive. In the second place, theology is more 
exegetical and scriptural and less biased by phi- 
losophy and speculation. The modern commenta- 
ries show far less of theological and sectarian bias 
than the older ones, and are far more loyal to the 
letter as well as the spirit of Scripture, Then, 
theology is centering more and more about Christ. 
The different and opposing theologies contend 
about points of doctrine. Calvinism revolves 



THE PRINCIPLES OF THE DISCIPLES, 45 

about the sovereignty of God; Arminianism 
about the free agency of man ; Universalism about 
God's mercy, and Unitarianism about his unity. 
All these are truths, but not one of them is the 
central and supreme truth of the Christian revela- 
tion. Christ is the central truth of the gospel, 
and modern theology is centering about Christ. 
So there are changes taking place in the polity or 
government of the church, and especially in the 
work of the church, which all tend towards the 
church's final unity. It is marvelous to me that 
any one who can discern the signs of the times 
can fail to see that they point with more or less 
clearness and certainty to the fulfillment of our 
Lord's last prayer for his people, that they all 
might be one, . . that so the world might believe 
that the Father had sent him. This on-coming 
union of Christ's church may be nearer, or it may 
be farther, than we think. It is not for us to sit 
down and speculate as to the time or the manner 
of its coming, but to work for it and pray for it. 
God seldom gives to one people or one generation 
to achieve so great a work, lest they become vain 
of the achievement. But every one of us may 
bear part in that work and bring its completion 
nearer. Every one of us may do something to ful- 
fill our Lord's prayer for the unity of his disciples. 
Every one who confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord, 
and believes in his heart that God has raised him 
from the dead, and, casting aside all the creeds 



4(5 THE PRINCIPLES OF THE DISCIPLES. 

and commandments of men, renouncing all parties 
and sects, cleaves only unto Christ as his Savior 
and his Master, to be trusted in every promise and 
obeyed in every command, helps to bring in that 
blessed day when we shall keep the unity of the 
faith in the bond of peace ; when there will be, as 
at the beginning, one body, or church, with one 
spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God 
and Father of all. 



THE PRINCIPLES OF THE DISCIPLES. 

" I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beseech you to walk worthily of 
the calling wherewith ye were called, with all lowliness and meekness, with 
long-suffering, forbearing one another in love; giving diligence to keep the 
unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace."— Eph. 4: 1,2. 

The present divisions among Christians are a 
manifest wrong to almost every one who has no 
interest in preserving them. Whether they are 
judged in the light of the Scriptures, which every- 
where teach the unity of the church, or from their 
effects on the unbelieving world, the separation of 
the church into sects appears an almost unmiti- 
gated evil. But they are, for all that, justified by 
many as a necessary evil. Necessary, some think, 
because the union of all sects into one would form 
a religious despotism, perilous to the liberties and 
the highest interests of mankind. The church, it 
is thought, is not yet ready to be trusted with the 
power which would come of its union, and so it is 
necessary to distribute and divide its power among 
many sects, rather than to concentrate it into one 
great body. And though this division is neces- 
sarily productive of many evils, they are, on the 
whole, less than would come if the same power was 
wielded by one great organization. Thus, the ar- 
gument runs, if the Roman Catholic Church were 

(47) 



48 THE PRINCIPLES OF THE DISCIPLES. 

divided, the rights and liberties of men would be 
safer than they are now in the presence of that 
united and powerful hierarchy. Then to unite 
Protestantism, as Romanism is united, would be 
to give us two religious despotisms in place of one, 
and so double the dangers of such despotism. 

It does not lie in my way to consider this argu- 
ment at length. It is enough to say that the power 
of all despotism is the power of error. Thus, po- 
litical despotism is perpetuated through the error 
that it is the divine right of some men to rule over 
others. Religious despotism has the same sort of 
foundation. And when we put two errors together, 
or unite two religious bodies whose fundamental 
principle is error, this is, of course, to increase the 
power of error and to make despotism more 
despotic. But Christian union is not a union of 
error or in error. It is the casting out of error and 
uniting men in the truth. And a union founded 
in truth can never become despotic. Power whose 
source is truth can never be abused. Thus the 
apostolic church was a united church, and yet it 
made not the faintest approach to despotism, be- 
cause the bond and basis of its union was the 
truth as it is in Jesus. And it was only when 
the church was moved away from this foundation- 
truth, and began to establish itself in error, that 
its union began to work evil in the world, and its 
power became despotic. That is, only when it 
ceased to be the true church, and maintained only 



THE PKLDTCIPLES OF THE DISCIPLES. 49 

its name o* church, did it become a despotism. It 
may be admitted that a union of sects, with all 
their errors, would be a calamity ; but such a 
union is not Christian union. The objections 
which justly lie against it are of no force against 
the union for which we seek. 

There are others, again, who hold that the pres- 
ent divisions in the church are a necessary evil, 
not because their healing at the present time would 
result in greater evils, but because this healing is 
at present impossible. We can find no basis of 
union on which all Christians will consent to 
stand. And, so desirable as union may appear, it 
is as yet manifestly impossible. That brings us 
to what I call the second principle of the Disci- 
ples, the peculiar basis on which we propose to 
unite the church. How, then, have others pro- 
posed to unite the church ? let us ask, that we may 
make our principle stand out more clearly. 

Some have proposed to build up one great sect, 
which should overshadow and swallow up all 
others, until itself should be the sole claimant to 
the church's name remaining. This is the Roman 
plan — to arrogate to itself the claim to be the true 
and only church, to make no concessions, to grant 
no trace, but steadfastly press its claims until they 
shall be acknowledged by all men. This Romish 
method is imitated more or less by all sects. 
Each asserts its claim to be the best church, if not 
the only true church, and each fondly hopes that 



50 THE PRINCIPLES OF THE DISCIPLES. 

in time all others will yield the field in its favor. 
It was never the purpose of the men who began 
our reformation to found a new sect. Their sepa- 
rate existence was forced upon them against their 
will. And it will be a very sad thing for us, if our 
efforts are diverted from their original aim to the 
work of building up another sect, which we fondly 
hope may at length overshadow all the rest. 

Then, there is the hope of uniting the church by 
bringing all Christians to accept a common stand- 
ard of doctrine. It seems a singular irony of his- 
tory that all the great creeds, which have proved 
so divisive and schismatic, which have been as 
wedges to cleave the church into pieces, and walls 
to keep it divided, should have been designed by 
those who constructed them to bind the church 
into closer union. Yet such is the fact. Each 
creed was called forth by the divisions which pre- 
vailed among professing Christians, and each was 
an honest though mistaken endeavor after unity. 

Even among those who hope for a creed-union, 
there is much difference of opinion. Some would 
have us take that creed which is most in harmony 
with the Scriptures, as if every man did not put in 
that claim for his creed and enforce it by a plausi- 
ble array of proof-texts. Others propose the most 
popular creed, that which has been most widely 
accepted in the religious world, as if this was a 
question to be settled by a simple counting of 
noses, as if majorities were always right. Still 



THE PRINCIPLES OF THE DISCIPLES. 51 

others propose a compromise creed, in which the 
leading points of all the creeds shall be harmon- 
ized and preserved, as if the church could ever be 
held together by the policy of compromise. Then it 
is still further urged that we should go back in the 
past for our creed, to the time when the church 
was yet undivided, and uttered its faith with one 
voice. But it is not agreed how far back we should 
go. Should we go back to Calvin, or to Luther, or 
beyond these to Wicklife, or beyond him to 
Augustine? Or should we go back to the first 
council of the church, when representatives from 
all parts of Christendom gathered in the city of 
Mce, in Bythinia, in the year 325, and took upon 
them to declare the faith of the universal church ? 
Let us take the utterances of that great and vener- 
able council, say some, and unite on them. Others, 
yet, propose a simpler, if not an older, basis of 
union, namely, what is miscalled the Apostles' 
Creed, with which, I suppose, most of us are famil- 
iar. We see, then, there is no want of variety in 
the proposed plans of union, and the most judi- 
cious might find it difficult to decide among them. 
Now the Disciples propound a basis different 
from all these. They agree with those who say 
that we should go back to the past for our ground 
of union. These are on the right track, but they 
don't go far enough. We propose to go back be- 
yond Mce to Jerusalem. We propose to go beyond 
the so-called and spurious Apostles' Creed, to the 



52 THE PEINCIPLES OF THE DISCIPLES. 

real and proper creed of the apostles. That is, we 
propose to unite the church by restoring to its 
proper place and authority the teaching of the 
apostles, as that is recorded for us in the New Tes- 
tament, and make that our ground of union. We 
reason thus : the church was united once ; if we 
can find the bond by which it was united, and re- 
store that to the church, and cast out from among 
us all that may not be included in that bond, then 
may we see the church one in our day as it was in 
the days of the apostles. The principle of the 
Disciples is the restoration of the primitive and 
apostolic faith to the church, as the only and all- 
sufficient bond of union. I am not so much con- 
cerned now to justify that principle as to show you 
what it is and how it differs from all others. For 
it appears to me that its simple statement is its 
justification. To state it is to vindicate it. 

Regard to this leading principle of our move- 
ment, the restoration of the apostolic teaching to 
its place in the church, will explain many things 
which excite surprise and sometimes provoke the 
disapproval of the religious world. 

First, we find here explanation of that spirit of 
discussion which was so characteristic of us at the 
first, and has not yet wholly departed from us. 
Not only have we debated with our neighbors as 
we had opportunity, but we have had no small 
disputation among ourselves almost from the 
beginning of our work. The main purpose of this 



THE PRINCIPLES OF THE DISCIPLES. 53 

discussion has been to find out what is the apos- 
tolic teaching, that we may restore it. It has pro- 
ceeded from the endeavor to discriminate between 
what is incidental and what is essential in the 
apostolic teaching. For example, the apostles 
exhorted some to whom they wrote to greet one an 
other with the holy kiss ; and again, the duty of 
the saints to wash one another's feet is enjoined. 
And we know there are sects yet remaining who 
practice these as apostolic ordinances, though the 
great majority of Christians think these are but 
temporary and local applications of the obliga- 
tions of Christian hospitality and fraternity. 
There were other things enjoined and practiced by 
the apostles which were peculiar to their age and 
civilization, and when we propose to restore apos- 
tolic teaching to the church we are called upon at 
once to distinguish between the transient and the 
permanent elements in the work of the apostles. 
And that is a distinction which can not be estab- 
lished without thorough and continued discussion. 
Let us not grow impatient with the discussion 
which our movement has engendered, but try to 
keep out of it all bitterness and all malice, and 
consider our differences as brethren. 

We find in this principle of restoration the 
explanation of the various names which we bear, 
as Christians, or Disciples, when spoken of as in- 
dividuals ; and churches of Christ, or Christian 
churches, when spoken of as congregations. This 



54 THE PRINCIPLES OF THE DISCIPLES. 

calling ourselves by the names originally applied 
to all Christ's people, instead of taking some 
denominational name, has appeared very unchari- 
table and offensive to many ; for it seems to appro- 
priate the Christian name to ourselves and deny it 
to others, when it belongs equally to all Christ's 
disciples. But we do not appropriate this name 
to ourselves and deny it to others. On the 
contrary, we plead with all who own the will and 
law of Christ to renounce all party names and 
wear their Lord's alone. And we enforce our plea 
by our example. We renounce all human names 
for the name of Christ. We are bound on princi- 
ple to do this. We would restore to the church 
that worthy name by which the apostolic church 
was called. The world is largely ruled by names. 
If we could cast off our distinctive names our 
divisions would largely disappear. If we could 
restore the original names of the church, its orig- 
inal unity would be brought so far on its way. It 
may be impossible in the circumstances to escape 
a narrower use of the Christian name than the 
apostles made. But we should use it in as nearly 
the same sense as they used it as possible. We find 
in this idea of restoration of the apostolic teaching 
an explanation of the emphasis and prominence 
we have given to certain commandments of Christ, 
as the command to be baptized. Starting out with 
the object of restoring every ordinance of the Lord 
to the place which the apostles assigned it, as the 



THE PKINCIPLES OF THE DISCIPLES. 55 

great principle of healing the church's divisions, 
we found baptism depreciated from its apostolic 
importance, on the one hand, and exalted above 
its measure, on the other. As to the act itself, we 
found that the original apostolic burial with Christ 
in baptism had been removed and something else 
substituted in its place. As to the significance, we 
found on one part it was esteemed a mere cere- 
mony of very subordinate importance, and in no 
sense connected with salvation, and on the other 
part it had been made over into a regenerating 
ordinance, which, apart from repentance and faith 
in him who received it, became a means of grace to 
cleanse the soul from sin. It became the duty of 
the Disciples, if they were true to their principle 
of restoration, to discover and proclaim the true 
form and meaning of baptism ; to show in the first 
place that it was the true and proper expression of 
the soul's renunciation of sin and its trust in 
Christ who commanded it, and without these ante- 
cedents of faith and repentance it is of no value, 
indeed, is no baptism at all; and in the second 
place, to show that, being commanded by Christ 
along with faith and repentance, it can not be 
lightly regarded without doing despite to his 
authority, and depriving ourselves of the promise 
of his forgiveness. We do not seek to make a 
hobby of baptism, or certainly we should not do 
so. Bat the union of the church can never come 
until every plant which the heavenly Father has 



56 THE PRINCIPLES OF THE DISCIPLES. 

not planted shall be rooted from its place in the 
faith of the church, and every plant in the original 
system of faith which ignorant or presumptuous 
hands have rooted up shall be set in its place 
again. 

Let us, above all things, keep in view the purpose 
for which we seek to restore to the church its orig- 
inal unity. It is in order, as our fathers were wont 
to say, to the speedy conversion of the world ; or, 
as our Lord prayed, " that the world may believe 
that thou has sent me." Unbelief is the root of all 
sin and the source of all sorrow. It is the trail of 
the serpent that slimes and defiles the fairest flow- 
ers of human life. It is the greatest calamity that 
can befall the heart. To be destitute of wealth, of 
honor, of friends, to weep over the green graves of 
our loved ones, this is hard enough and sad enough. 
But sadder and harder beyond all compare is the 
lot of him who is destitute of faith. Without faith 
it is impossible to please God or serve man. It is 
the noblest of all works to promote faith in the 
hearts of men. Let us seek to make it as easy as 
possible for men to believe. Let us strive together 
in our mind, in our spirit, and in our body to make 
the faith of the gospel acceptable to all men. Then 
shall be brought to pass that vision of the seer 
from his island prison, "The kingdoms of this world 
are become the kingdoms of our Lord and his 
Christ ; and he shall reign forever." 



VI. 

AGAINST CREEDS. 

"And ye have made void the word of God because of j T our tradition." — 
Matt. 15: 6. 

It is well understood by all who are acquainted 
with the movement for the reformation of the 
church and the restoration of the faith of the apos- 
tolic church, with which this church is historically 
associated, that it has, from the first day of its 
existence until now, been most outspoken and 
uncompromising in its opposition to human creeds 
as bonds of union and tests of fellowship among 
the followers of Christ. We have undoubtedly 
toned down in respect to some other things. We 
do not make the same undiscriminating warfare on 
a regular and settled ministry as was the custom 
of our fathers. While we recognize that their 
attacks were not without great provocation and 
fair semblance of reason, we have learned, as most 
of them learned, that a regular ministry of the 
gospel, and paid pastoral care of the churches, are 
indispensable to the life and growth of the church, 
and whatever may be their tendencies and perils, 
they can never work such harm to the churches as 
to leave them without such care. So likewise the 
leaders of this movement were inclined at first to 
commit themselves against missionary societies, 

(57) 



58 AGAINST CEEEDS. 

as both inexpedient and unlawful for the church's 
adoption. But we have gradually given over our 
opposition to them, and now use them as a neces- 
sary means of discharging the great commission 
which the Lord has left to his church. Not one 
person in twenty among us to-day regards the 
society issue as anything else than both a false 
issue and a dead issue. I have been in a position 
to speak on this subject from knowledge, and I 
declare to you that one in twenty is a very liberal 
allowance for those who think the society principle 
opposed to the word of God. I might speak of 
other things in which time and experience have 
wrought a change in our opinions and modified our 
views, but these suffice to make my point appar- 
ent. 

One of the things in which, however, we all 
remain one, and continue as we began; in which we 
have not changed, have not let down in the least, 
have not modified, but rather intensified our con- 
victions, is this, the inexpediency and unlawful- 
ness of human creeds as bonds of union and terms 
of fellowship. Here we are all joined together in 
one mind and one judgment, and all speak the 
same thing. 

I. Let me, then, in the first place, state plainly 
the point of our objection to creeds, that we may 
not be misunderstood or ranged on the side of the 
enemies of truth and of faith. What do we mean 



AGAINST CREEDS. 59 

by "creeds," when we avow our opposition to 
them ? 

1. We do not mean the same as belief. A man 
may have many beliefs, and these may be as deep 
as the fountains of his own life, and yet he may be 
a man without a creed, in the sense in which that 
word is meant in our usage of it. We make no 
war on beliefs ; very far from it. On the contrary, 
one of our objections to the creeds is that they tend 
to promote unbelief instead of faith. We have no 
sympathy with the common practice of some loose 
and, as they love to be called, liberal thinkers, 
who set creed over against character and conduct, 
telling us in many specious phrases that it is of no 
consequence what a man believes, but what he is 
and what he does. We believe that both charac- 
ter and conduct must be grounded in faith, and 
that creed in this sense is as vitally related to d^ed 
as cause to effect, or means to end. Character 
is the solid framework of bone and tissue and 
muscle, and is the product of the food of truth 
taken into the moral system by faith. To say that 
it makes no difference what a man believes, is like 
saying it makes no difference what he eats. It 
does make a world of difference. The food must 
be such not only in name but in fact ; it not only 
must have the form and appearance of food, but 
it must contain the elements of nutrition and 
stimulation. Truth is the nourishment of a man's 
soul, and there can be no character, and no con- 



60 AGAINST CREEDS. 

duct either, without it. The man who believes 
nothing will be nothing and do nothing. In de- 
nouncing creeds, therefore, we by no means 
denounce the duty of belief, nor yet the truth 
which those creeds may contain. 

2. In opposing creeds we do not thereby oppose 
all statements of doctrine which may be made for 
the information of the public, whether those state- 
ments be drawn up by one or a number of per- 
sons. I have been told that as often as I propose 
any interpretation of any text, or even any view 
as to the meaning of any particular statement, I 
recite, in effect, an article of my creed. That is, 
to express a conviction or conclusion, in any mat- 
ter of religion, is to propose a creed. Now, this 
is a strange and almost incredible misstatement, 
when we consider the respectability and intelli- 
gence of the people who make it. The creed is 
not what I believe. It is what I say you must be- 
lieve or else I will have no fellowship with you. 
So long as I do not force it upon you, so long as I 
do not insist upon it as a term of communion 
between us it is not a creed, but only a conviction. 
It is when I seek to fasten this statement of my 
own upon you as a part of the divine word that it 
becomes a creed. So we may say of a church. 
This church might publish a statement of its con- 
victions as touching any item of Christian truth 
and endorse it unanimously, and that would not 
make it a creed. If, for example, this sermon on 



AGAINST CKEEDS. , 61 

the unlawfulness of creeds should happen to give 
such satisfaction to this church that its publica- 
tion was deemed desirable and by unanimous re- 
quest and vote of the congregation I should con- 
sent to publish it, this would not be a creed of the 
church on the subject of creeds. The mere pub- 
lication of our convictions does not make a creed. 
If this were the case there would be a veritable 
deluge of creeds. There would be as many creeds 
as there are books. Every sermon might be called 
a creed. Every utterance of one's faith in the 
hearing of others might then be regarded as the 
promulgation of a creed. Now every one knows 
that this is not what is meant when we speak gen- 
erally of human creeds and represent them as evil 
in their results. 

3. What, then, is a creed, in the sense in which 
we oppose it ? Let me answer in the words of one 
who should be an authority in the matter, since, if 
he has not helped to make some of the creeds, he 
has written very ably in defense of them. Dr. Schaff 
thus defines a creed : u A form of words setting 
forth with authority certain articles of belief which 
are regarded by the framers as necessary for sal- 
vation, or at least for the welfare of the church." 
A creed, then, in the first place, assumes to be an 
authoritative document. It sets forth the articles 
which are affirmed by the church as necessary to 
salvation. When we inquire into the nature of 
this authority we find various ideas of its import. 



62 AGAINST CREEDS. 

Sojne regard this authority as simply the authority 
of the church expressed through its leaders and 
representatives, so that it is equivalent to saying : 
These are the articles which the church decides to 
be necessary to salvation and which she here an- 
nounces and proclaims through her teachers in 
this form of words. Others would explain this 
authority as the authority of the church's teach- 
ers, to whom has been committed the office of 
interpreting the Scriptures, and who here proclaim, 
in virtue of this office, what is their true mean- 
ing and interpretation. A third class allege for 
the creed nothing less than the direct author- 
ity of God, claiming that the creed-makers were 
actually inspired for their work, and in fram- 
ing the articles of the creed they spoke as holy 
men of God moved by the Holy Spirit. There are 
eminent Protestant divines who hold to this view 
of the authority of the creeds. It follows from 
this that a creed must be either directly or other- 
wise a term of communion and a test of fellow- 
ship. That is, no one can share the communion 
of the church or be publicly engaged in promoting 
its growth who does not accept the creed as an 
authorized interpretation of the divine truth. 
Thus, in the case of the publication of a sermon, 
as referred to already, we might all agree to its 
correctness as a statement of truth, but we do 
not propose it as a test of fellowship. We do not 
ask that every one who enters this church should 



AGAINST CREEDS. 63 

endorse either the doctrine or the statement of 
the sermon. We do not require even that our 
ministers shall adopt any such statement. We 
might unanimously endorse a statement in entire 
accord with the New Testament and recommend it 
to the consideration and acceptance of others, but 
we do not make its acceptance a condition of mem- 
bership in the church, or even of gospel ministry. 
If any man of us were to attempt to do this, there 
are many of us who would spring up instantly to 
oppose it and would split the church into fragments 
sooner than see such a document bound upon it as 
a law, even though we all regarded it as a true and 
correct document, a sound statement of gospel 
truth. There would be no danger of a split, how- 
ever, for we would as unanimously reject such a 
statement, when it was offered to us as a term of 
fellowship, as we would accept it, were it given 
out only as a statement of truth for public in- 
formation. This, then, is the point of our objection 
to creeds. It is not that we object to clear and 
definite beliefs, nor that we oppose the statement 
of such beliefs in various ways for public informa- 
tion and instruction, nor that we charge the par- 
ticular statements of the creeds as altogether un- 
true ; but we object to making such statements 
authoritative and final, making them terms of sal- 
vation and tests of fellowship. 

II. We pass then from this point of our objec- 
tion to state some of the grounds and reasons of it. 



64 AGAINST CEEED3. 

1. Creeds, as defined in what has been said 
already, are without warrant or authority in the 
word of God. I do not mean simply that there is 
no command or precedent in Scripture or inference 
from it which may justify the use of creeds, but 
that the fundamental principle on which they rest 
is without any support in Scripture and is indeed 
contradictory to it. That is, there is no provision 
anywhere in Scripture for any authorized interpre- 
tation of its meaning. I would be perfectly will- 
ing to stake the whole case and rest the whole 
argument here. Nowhere in the word of God is 
there provided or appointed any power of authori- 
tative interpretation. The Scriptures are peculiar 
in this. The constitution of the United States 
has in the Supreme Court or the Judiciary a con- 
stituted power of interpretation ; and we find in 
these judicial decisions the authorized interpreta- 
tions of the constitution, so that in addition to 
the many private commentaries on the constitu- 
tion, none of which have any authority other than 
their own inherent reasonableness, we have these 
authoritative expositions of the organic law of 
our country. But there is no supreme court of 
Jesus Christ, no divinely ordained judiciary whose 
office it is to sit in judgment on the meaning of the 
Scriptures and render decisions from which there 
is no appeal. So the creeds have constituted for 
themselves an authorized interpretation. Besides 
numerous private commentaries on the creeds, 



AGAINST CKEEDS. 65 

there are certain official bodies who may decide 
on the consistency of any given doctrine with 
the creed, and whose decision in the case, for all 
who accept the creed, is final. But there is no 
such body provided in Scripture to ascertain its 
interpretation. The teachers and ministers of 
the church have a peculiar though not exclusive 
office of interpretation ; yet their interpretations 
have no more authority than the same interpre- 
tations would have from the lips of a layman. 
The same is true of the interpretation of any 
particular body of Christians ; that interpretation 
has no more authority than it would have if it 
proceeded from the humblest member in the 
church. That is, the right of private judgment, 
which is the fundamental principle of Protest- 
antism, is also a fundamental principle of Script- 
ure. There is no appointed authority of inter- 
pretation, but every child of God, every servant 
of Jesus Christ, has the right, and consequently 
the obligation, to interpret the meaning of Scrip- 
ture for himself. I do not wonder that the ablest 
apologists and advocates of the creeds would re- 
strict within very narrow limits the right of pri- 
vate judgment. Their course is logical and inevi- 
table. Indeed the only logical defense of creeds, 
as it appears to me, is to say, (1) either that the 
priest has the power of interpretation entrusted to 
him as his exclusive prerogative, as the Komish 
Church does say or do, or (2) that C-od raised 



Q6 AGAINST CREEDS. 

up and inspired special men in different ages of 
the church to formulate creeds and deliver to his 
people the authoritative interpretation of his 
word, as some Protestants hold. One thing is 
plain, there is no logical defense of creeds con- 
sistent with the divinely guaranteed right of pri- 
vate judgment. Sooner or later either that or the 
creeds must go overboard. 

2. The objection to creeds, however, is not only 
that they are without warrant in Scripture, but, 
secondly, that they tend to set aside and make 
void the word of God, and substitute for the com- 
mandments of God the traditions and interpreta- 
tions of men. This comes about in several ways. 
I will not speak of the obvious errors which they 
contain, and which, so far as they are received, 
must annul the divine truth, because the fact that 
the creeds teach error is not the chief ground of 
my objection against them. If they were all true 
I should still oppose them. Because in any case 
they serve to divert attention from the truth and 
fix the mind and thought of the church upon what 
is at best a mere interpretation of the truth. The 
heart's interest in the truth is transferred from the 
Bible to the creed. I know this will be vehemently 
denied, but it appears to me that no fact in history 
is more conclusively established. If one will take 
the trouble to look into literature in the time when 
the power of creeds was greatest, he will see that 
the language and logic of the creeds play as great 



AGAINST CKEEDS. 67 

a part as the words of Scripture, that the appeal is 
as often made to the creeds, that their authority is 
as freely quoted, and that they have altogether as 
great a place in the mind of the author as the word 
of God itself. Commentaries, sermons, systems of 
theology, plainly show that the creed divided and 
distracted the minds of the authors from a thor- 
ough study of the oracles of God. And not only 
do the creeds divert the mind from that all-absorb- 
ing attention to the word of God necessary to gather 
its meaning, but it also accomplishes the perver- 
sion of that sacred Word, and that in a very obvi- 
ous and inevitable way. Every man who sub- 
scribes to a creed promises vitually to read the 
Bible in the light of that creed ; to construe its 
meaning according to this human and fallible 
statement of doctrine. This checks all independent 
investigation and makes him trim down his own 
apprehensions of truth to suit the authorized 
standard. That cannot but result in the perversion 
and sacrifice of truth. That is, when we read the 
word in the candle-light of the creed instead of 
the sure light of its own self-evidencing truth and 
in the light of the necessary laws of interpretation, 
frequent perversion of its meaning is inevitable. 
Thus it is most humiliating to see the great Augus- 
tine, after he has laid down with marvelous clear- 
ness and correctness the laws, one may almost say 
the axioms of Scripture interpretation, groping and 
groveling in the hopeless endeavor to accord his 



68 AGAINST CREEDS. 

interpretations with the vaporings of Irenseus and 
Origen, whose views had no other recommendation 
than that they had been incorporated into the 
creed of the church, and therefore had the sanction 
of authority. It is pitiful to see his Titanic soul 
prostrate itself before these pigmies, that not only 
his towering intellect and the great laws of inter- 
pretation which he has announced, but even the 
word of God as well, may be trampled in the dust. 
And yet that is bound to be the result when 
Augustine must read the Scripture according to 
the authoritative interpretations of Origen and 
Irenseus. 

3. It must be charged against the creeds also 
that they tend to arrest the progress of thought in 
the minds of those that accept them. It is true 
that we are to have no new revelations of truth ; the 
faith has been once for all delivered to the saints. 
He that adds to it or takes from it shall do it at 
his peril. But man's apprehension of the truth 
should enlarge from age to age. We are exhorted 
to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord 
and Savior Jesus Christ. Now the effect of the 
creeds is to put a period to progress, to stunt or 
stay the growth of knowledge, to make the impres- 
sion that God has no more light to break from his 
Word than that which the creeds reflect. They 
seek to tether the mind of the church to this or 
that period of history, this or that system of the- 
ology, and forbid it to range through the whole 



AGAINST CEEEDS. 69 

realm of truth. They would surround the church 
with a Chinese wall forbidding either the egress of 
error or the entrance of truth. They would keep 
the ship of Zion coasting along the headlands of 
tradition and, instead of steering its course out into 
the great, wide sea of God's truth, according to the 
chart and compass of the Divine word and provi- 
dence, they would anchor it in some land-locked 
harbor, leaving it only a sufficient length of cable 
to move around in a safe circle and play progress 
until the Lord comes. The creeds have not suc- 
ceeded, indeed, in arresting the progress of the 
church, but that is simply because the church has 
outgrown and cut loose from them, holding them 
only in form while denying their substance. 

4. There are other reasons which should con- 
strain us to contend earnestly against the power of 
creeds : such as that they promote insincerity and 
hypocrisy in many who profess to hold and teach 
them; that they repel many who would not be 
repelled by the New Testament; that they are 
more difficult of interpretation than the Scriptures 
which they essay to interpret, and that they are a 
fruitful source of sectarianism, of strife and of 
schism, dividing asunder those whom God hath 
joined together. 

Hear, then, the conclusion of the whole matter. 
The gospel does not require you to accept a creed, 
but to accept Christ. It does not propose to you a 
long statement of articles, but it propounds to } T ou 



70 AGAINST CKEEDS. 

a single inquiry : " Dost thou believe on the Son of 
God ? " Can you say with Simon Peter, " Thou art 
the Christ, the Son of the living God ? " "Wilt thou 
confess the Lord Jesus to the glory of God the 
Father? This is the saving faith. This is the tes- 
timony of God's word : " If thou wilt confess with 
thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in thine 
heart that God hath raised him from the dead, 
thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man be- 
lieves unto righteousness, and with the mouth con- 
fession is made unto salvation." "If you know 
these things, happy are ye if ye do them. " 



VII. 
CHRISTIAN STEWARDSHIP. 

" So therefore whosoever he be of you that renounceth not all that he hath, 
he_can not be my disciple."— Luke 14: 33. 

We are impressed, first of all, with the harsh 
and forbidding aspect of Jesus as he appears in 
the utterance of these words. His face, if not 
frowning, is certainly not smiling. His hands 
are not stretched forth in tender entreaty and gra- 
cious invitation, but instead of beckoning the mul- 
titude to follow on he bids them be off and gone. 
His words and gesture, his expression of counte- 
nance, all seem to repel men from his presence. 
The very tones of his voice must have seemed 
stern and awful as he pointed to the cruel cross 
and said, " If any man will come after me, let him 
take up his cross and follow me ;" pointed to their 
homes and their parents, their husbands, their wives, 
their children, their possessions, yea, laid his hand 
on their very lives and said, " If any man hate not 
father and mother, wife and children, brothers and 
sisters, houses and lands, yea, and his own life 
also, he can not be my disciple. " After these 
words we are somewhat surprised not to read those 
words which we find in another place, " From 
that time many of his disciples went back and 

(71) 



72 CHRISTIAN STEWARDSHIP. 

walked with him no more," as perhaps they would 
have done if they had understood him. 

And what further impresses and surprises us, 
what must have puzzled and offended the multi- 
tudes, and perhaps his own disciples, for the time, 
is the apparent conflict and contradiction of these 
words with other and recent utterances of this same 
Lord. In the hearing of the multitudes, perhaps 
in the hearing of many in this multitude,*he had 
said : " Come unto me, all ye that labor and are 
heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take 
my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek 
and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest to your 
souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is 
light." These sweet and rythmic notes of love — 
what a discord between them and the hard a 
harsh tones of the text ! " So likewise, whoso- 
ever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he 
hath, he cannot be my disciple," In this very 
chapter he had likened his kingdom to a great 
supper, to which all were graciously invited to 
come by the messengers of the lord who made it ; 
yea, these messengers were commissioned to go 
out into the streets and lanes of the city, the high- 
ways and hedges of the country, and compel men 
to come into the supper that the house might be 
filled. And now when they are coming in great 
multitudes, he seems to meet them at the door and 
drive them back, by making the terms of entrance 
into his kingdom so hard and so humiliating that 



CHRISTIAN STEWARDSHIP. 73 

no reasonable man can be expected to comply 
with them. 

I shall not pause long to explain this seeming 
contradiction. I admit its force. One who heard 
the Lord on these two different occasions, first 
inviting and then forbidding; first saying "Come 
on," and then saying " Go back," might very 
plausibly have concluded that he had altered his 
tone and changed his mind, or that an altogether 
different mood was upon him. 

But I only take time to say now that that is an 
altogether shallow and mistaken explanation of 
the seeming difference of these two utterances. 
We make a great mistake if we think that love is 
only soft and tender and inviting. It must be 
sometimes stern and awful and angry. The same 
voice which woes in so much mercy must some- 
times thunder forth in indignation and wrath. 
Jesus sees that the multitudes are following him 
without counting the cost, without considering the 
consequences, without any appreciation of his real 
mission, or of what it means to be his disciple, 
and so he turns on them in terrible rebuke and in 
solemn warning. " So likewise, whosoever he be 
of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he can 
not be my disciple." 

Now let us give earnest heed to these words lest 
we should let any part of their meaning slip 
through our minds without profit. 

First, this great hard law of discipleship is a 



74 CHRISTIAN STEWARDSHIP. 

universal law. " Whosoever there be of you who 
does not renounce all can not be my disciple." 
The Lord does not slice this multitude up into sec- 
tions, and bind this law on some, leaving the rest 
free. He did not call out the little circle of his 
immediate disciples — Peter, Andrew, James, John, 
Thomas and the rest of the twelve, — and say, on 
you and you only rests this great obligation: 
"Unless you forsake all, you can not be my apos- 
tles or my disciples." Neither did he elect from 
the number a few of the wisest and the richest and 
the noblest, and lay upon them this hard and 
inexorable law. Nor yet did he say that a few in 
each section must forsake all and the rest be freed 
from the sacrifice. That one word "whosoever" 
means much more than this. In that word Christ 
causes, so to say, every man in the multitude to 
pass singly and in his own person before him, and 
as he passes lays this law upon him, saying: 
" Thou art the man," and " unless thou in thine 
own person shalt obey this law, thou canst not be 
my disciple." Then the Lord did not divide his 
disciples up according to the different ages of the 
church — the first, or apostolic age; the second, or 
primitive age; the third, or apostate age; the fourth, 
or reformatory age; the fifth; or missionary age; and 
say in some of these ages this great law of dis- 
cipleship shall be binding, and in others it shall 
be null and of no effect. He did not mean that 
in the age of the apostles and the first Christians 



CHRISTIAN" STEWARDSHIP. 75 

his great law should obtain, but after that it should 
gradually and insensibly lose its force. But we 
may well suppose that as he went on his way to 
the cross, and turned to proclaim the great law of 
discipleship to the multitudes, his eye not only 
rested on this Jewish multitude here before him, 
but glanced away through the ages and wan- 
dered out into all countries and beheld all the 
multitudes who through all times and climes 
should profess to be his disciples, and put upon 
them all this duty of renouncing all things for his 
sake. Not upon some — ministers, missionaries, 
monastics — but upon every disciple in every age, 
until he himself shall appear a second time with- 
out sin unto salvation. "Whosoever there be of 
you that forsake th not all that he hath, he can not 
be my disciple." That wide word takes in every 
soul of every age. You know well how we inter- 
pret another "whosoever." " Whosoever will, let 
him take of the water of life freely." That great 
invitation includes us all. That is not meant for 
ministers and missionaries and saints only, but for 
the wide world. The old Puritan divine of the last 
century, John Berridge, was accustomed to say 
that he found more comfort in that word " whoso- 
ever " than if he had found his own name written 
in the text. " If," said he, " it were, let John Ber- 
ridge come and take of the water of life freely, I 
might think that another John Berridge was meant ; 
but when it says whosoever, I know it means me." 



76 CHRISTIAN STEWARDSHIP. 

And so can every one of us say, " It means me " 
more confidently than if we found our own names 
inscribed on that sacred page. But that whoso- 
ever is no wider than this : if it is true that " who- 
soever will may come and take of the water of life 
freely," it is no less true that "whosoever there 
be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath can 
not be my disciple." They stand or fall together. 

But, oh, you say, it is such a hard condition ! To 
renounce all, and not only that, but to hate all, if 
need be. " If any man come to me and liate not 
his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and 
brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, 
he can not be my disciple." This is putting the 
case so strong that even the preachers wince and 
explain it away, saying, that we are to understand 
the word "hate" as meaning not hate really, but 
love less. We must love all these less than we 
love our Lord, even as he himself teaches in an- 
other place. Bat we are not talking now about 
what our Lord says in another place, but what he 
says in this place ; and the thing he does say is 
that " if any man hate not father, and mother, and 
wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, he can 
not be my disciple." Now hate does not mean 
love in any degree, either less or more. The two 
words are the very opposite and mutually exclusive 
of each other. 

What our Lord means is that we are to hate 
the very mother that bore us in so far as she 



CHRISTIAN STEWARDSHIP. 77 

would stand between us and himself. Whatever 
or whoever comes between a soul and that soul's 
Savior is to be despised. The meaning is not that 
we are to hate any except so far as they hate 
Christ and would hinder our obedience to him. 
But to that extent they are our enemies and are to 
be regarded and treated as such. For a man's 
parents are no longer parents if they seek to sepa- 
rate him from Christ. The father or mother who 
holds back a child from following Jesus, virtually 
disinherits the child, and annuls the relation be- 
tween them. The child has no alternative left but 
to despise the counsel of his parents, and in so far 
as they seek to enforce that counsel, to despise and 
resist them. Let me try to make the point plain 
by an illustration, for it is one of exceeding impor- 
tance. 

A British paper tells of the daughter of an 
English nobleman, who in one of their summer 
vacations heard the gospel preached by a humble 
but earnest evangelist of one of the dissenting 
churches, and was so touched and moved by it 
that she resolved at once to give herself to Christ, 
and did it. The girl's conversion annoyed and 
chagrined her proud father. At first he was dis- 
posed to treat it as a foolish fancy, which would 
wear itself out in a few weeks. And so by travel 
over the country, by sojourning in fashionable 
watering places, by surrounding her with gay com- 
panions, by providing her with light and frivolous 



78 CHRISTIAN STEWARDSHIP. 

reading, he hoped to wean her heart from her Sav- 
ior. But that heart was fixed. All her tempta- 
tions only rooted her soul more and more in the 
Lord. At length the proud father resolved on a 
desperate expedient. He would put her faith to a 
final and terrible test. A great, gay, heartless 
company were gathered at the nobleman's home. 
It was arranged that in that company she was to 
be asked to sing a certain light and irreverent ditty 
which she had often sung to the amusement of the 
company in days past, and if she refused to 
sing it now, her refusal would be regarded as an 
insult to her father's guests. It was, indeed, a ter- 
rible temptation. The moment of trial came. The 
song was called for ; she was escorted to the piano. 
Running her hand tremblingly over its keys for a 
moment, her eyes cast down, but her heart raised 
in silent prayer, she began, not the words called 
for, but some very simple and solemn lines she had 
learned from the people among whom she found 
her Lord : 

" No room for mirth or trifling here," etc. 

The minstrel ceased. The painful silence was 
hardly broken by the noiseless footsteps of the 
company, as one after another they left the place 
and sought their homes. The father, completely 
broken in spirit, embraced his child and implored 
her prayers for his soul. We can not say that the 
girl hated her father except so far as he stood be- 



CHRISTIAN STEWARDSHIP. 79 

tween her and her Savior, and sought to make her 
deny her Lord. But so far she refused to own him 
as her father, and literally hated his instructions. 
As often as he thrust his will between her soul and 
her Savior she deliberately trampled it under foot 
and went on after her Lord. I think she knew 
what it was to hate father and mother in order to 
follow Christ. 

If, then, the dear relation of parent must be 
despised, if need be, for Christ's sake, how much 
more do we need to renounce everything else in 
order to be his disciple ! We must forsake all our 
possessions to follow him. We can own nothing 
if we would be owned of him. Those multitudes 
were following in the hope of being enriched by 
that glorious inheritance he would bestow upon 
them when he established his kingdom. They 
supposed that the wealth of the heathen would be 
wrested from them in order that the children of the 
kingdom might be made rich. He turns upon 
them and" denounces that delusion. Think not, he 
would say, that you are to be made rich by becom- 
ing my disciples. On the contrary, you are to be 
impoverished. The first and great condition of 
becoming my disciple is that you shall forsake all 
that you have, and become paupers for Christ's 
sake. " Whoso does not forsake all can not be 
my disciple." 

And this helps us to understand another hard 
passage, which has given the preachers and the 



80 CHRISTIAN STEWARDSHIP. 

rich brethren no little concern. To a rich young 
ruler who came to him, the Lord said : " Go and 
sell all you have, and give to the poor, and come 
and follow me, and you shall have treasure in 
heaven." And in explaining these words to his 
disciples, he said: "It is impossible for a rich 
man to enter into the kingdom of heaven; it 
is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a 
needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom 
of heaven." You have all heard this explained. 
The needle's eye — so some preachers tell us — is 
one of the small gates in the walls of Jeru- 
salem through which a man might pass, but 
through which a camel could not go except with 
great difficulty. If he was a well-trained beast, 
and was at himself, and stooped very low, and 
tugged and squeezed hard enough, he might at 
last slip through, but it would be a long and diffi- 
cult labor. So our Lord is made to teach that 
even a rich man can enter his kingdom 3 but it 
will be a mighty tight squeeze. 

Now I am constrained to repudiate this exegesis 
as laying too great a strain not only, on the camel, 
but on the text. Our Lord is not talking about a 
difficult but an impossible thing. He says plainly 
that it is impossible for a rich man to enter the 
kingdom of God. Now we see why it is impossi- 
ble. It is impossible for a rich man because it is 
impossible for any man. Every one must forsake 
all that he has in order to be Christ's disciple. 



CHRISTIAN STEWARDSHIP. 81 

And of course there is no exception in favor of the 
rich man. Christ requires of him just what he 
requires of the multitudes. Whosoever forsaketh 
not all that he hath cannot be my disciple. 
By what right then do we hold on to our property 
after becoming Christians ? How happens it that 
some of us, though we profess to be disciples 
of Christ, retain our property and increase it con- 
tinually? Does not this text explicitly forbid a 
disciple to possess a foot of land or a dollar of 
money or even a coat to his back ? Indeed it 
does. And there is only one way in which we can 
fairly have these things, and that is as the agents 
of our Lord. We are the stewards of the manifold 
grace of God. What we have we hold as a trust, 
and not in our own right. We must use it as of 
the ability which God giveth, and as those who 
must give account to God. This is the teaching of 
our Lord. Take, for example, his parable of the 
talents. Men are given different degrees of ability; 
but whether it be one talent or ten talents, it is a 
trust, and not our own ; it is to be used not in our 
name, but in Christ's name and with a constant 
thought of our final and certain accountability to 
him. Christian stewardship explains all. 

Suppose one of you shall become a disciple of 
Christ to-day. You do, if you become a disciple 
indeed, forsake all that you have. But you go 
home and find that the Lord has not sent after his 

property, Your house still stands in its place. 
6 



82 CHRISTIAN STEWARDSHIP. 

You find the furniture, the pictures, the valuables 
all in their places. Neither do you find there has 
been any notice left that he will send for them at 
a specified time, or that you must quit on a certain 
day, or sell out all and put it in the church treas- 
ury. You go down town and find the money in 
the cash drawer just as you left it Saturday even- 
ing, and your bank account stands as it was. You 
appear then to have lost nothing, to have forsaken 
nothing. But if you understand yourself you have 
forsaken all claim of ownership to these things 
and have offered them all freely at the foot of the 
cross, on which the Lord sits, no longer crucified, 
but coronated and glorified. It is all offered unto 
him. Now if it is his pleasure to give all these 
things back to you as his disciple, but with them 
to give also the charge that you shall henceforth 
use them in his name and as the agent and steward 
of his property and his bounty, they are still just 
as truly his own as if he had come down in a 
whirlwind and borne them back with him into 
glory. 

It happened in a southern city, some years ago, 
that a wholesale grocer failed. Instead of deed- 
ing over all the property he had left to his wife 
or his friends, he called a meeting of his creditors, 
spread out before them a complete statement of 
his liabilities, then gave to them a full inventory 
of all his assets, even to his household property, 
and asked them to distribute it among them as 



CHRISTIAN STEWARDSHIP. 83 

might seem best. His creditors were positively 
shocked. They did not know what to make of 
such a man. One by one they began to walk 
around in the great establishment to see if things 
were just as they were said to be. Presently, as 
of one consent and with one voice, they said, 
" We will leave this man in charge of this business. 
We will make him our agent, without bond." 
They called him in and announced their decision, 
saying, " Carry on this business as our trustee and 
render an account to us at the end of the year." 
Well, I am sorry I cannot tell you that this man 
grew rich, or that his creditors lost no money. 
But it can be said that it was a loss over which they 
did not grieve, and their agent closed out the busi- 
ness an honest man and with the respect and es- 
teem of those who had entrusted their property 
to his care. 

We, too, have wasted our Lord's substance in 
riotous living. In our conversion we confess our 
sin and surrender ourselves and our all unto him. 
He delivers it again into our hands, but charges us 
to use ourselves and our possessions, not as our 
own but as his who has redeemed us with his 
precious blood. " For ye are not your own : there- 
fore glorify God in your bodies and spirits, which 
are his." 



VIII. 
SEEKING THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. 

"But seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things 
shall be added unto you."— Matt. 6: 33. 

I. The kingdom of God is the domain in which 
God is acknowledged as king. If in your heart 
God's law is supreme, God's will is sovereign, 
God's name hallowed and honored above every 
name, then your heart is the kingdom of God. 
And the whole extent of God's kingdom on earth 
is measured by the number of hearts in which his 
authority is enthroned above all. To seek the 
kingdom of God, therefore, is to seek that state of 
mind and heart in which his will is the supreme 
law. To seek the righteousness of God is essen- 
tially the same thing. It is to seek right relations 
with God; and the right relation is a subject re- 
lation. Whether that relation be represented as 
creator and creature, sovereign and subject, father 
and child, it is always on man's part a subject 
relation. 

It is the work of sin to put us out of such rela- 
tion : to make us equal with God, or to exalt us 
above God. It was the ambition of equality with 
God that led to the first sin. God created man 
subject to himself, but he aspired after equality. 
Not content with the tree of life, of which he 

(84) 



SEEKING THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. 85 

might eat freely and live, lie must eat of the tree 
of the knowledge of good and evil, and die. The 
motive of the eating was that man might be as 
God, knowing good and evil. The divine reason 
for the commandment was death. But the 
tempter, opposing and maligning God, presented 
another reason, God's jealousy. He knows that if 
you eat of this you will be equal to him. And 
the prospect of equality with God was too much 
for the man's power of resistance ; he ate and fell. 
In reaching after equality with God he ceased to 
be a subject and became a rebel and an alien. 
That is, he was thrust into false relations with 
God, and so thrust out of his kingdom. For the 
kingdom of God is like Eden. None can dwell in 
it except such as are willingly subject to God's 
will. 

Not only in the matter of knowledge, but in the 
matter of dominion, we seek equality with God. 
Now absolute dominion and distinction belong to 
God alone. Man has neither the right nor the 
power to dominate the world -or direct the move- 
ments of history. It is not in man's power to 
direct his own life. The words of the prophet, " It 
is not in man that walketh to direct his steps," 
are manifestly true, as is shown both by reflection 
and experience. If we will only consider what 
is involved in the direction of a single life, we 
must see how it transcends all human wisdom. 
When a man directs the course of the ship across 



86 SEEKING THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. 

the ocean or through the narrows, he has at hand 
a chart and compass or before him certain land- 
marks that may guide him. When a man directs 
an army he has a map of the country before him, 
an estimate of the enemy against him, and is able 
to anticipate with reasonable certainty various 
maneuvers, surprises and counter-movements that 
might oppose his way. Even the pilot who directs 
the steamer down the St. Lawrence rapids is going 
a way he has often gone before. But it is not so 
with the course of human life. We are going into 
a dark and mysterious future and along a course 
never trodden by man before. Every path leads 
to the grave, but it coincides with no other up to 
that point. And so experience proves that no man 
has directed his own life. It has not been what 
he wished or proposed. The old will testify that 
they do not direct their own steps. We are hardly 
more than leaves tossed to and fro by the winds 
of fortune, or misfortune, some being carried up 
into the clouds and others cast into the ditch and 
covered with dirt and mould. 

Yet men are ever trying to take their lives into 
their own hands and seeking to take the place of 
God, directing their own lives, instead of being 
subject to his sovereignty. They are willing to 
have God, if they can give him a back seat while 
they take the lead. The reason that many build 
up godless lives is because God will not take a 
subordinate place, and they will give him no 



SEEKING THE KINGDOM OE HEAVEN. 87 

other. Like a man building a temple with a high 
seat for himself and a lower one for God. Men 
are willing to have Christ on board as a passenger 
provided they can do the piloting and commanding. 
Christ will consent to no such arrangement. He 
abandons the ship. 

Now, to receive the kingdom of God is to 
re-establish this subject relation between God and 
man ; to have God king in our soul ; to accept him 
as our sovereign. Christ is come to establish such 
relations between God and man. He has come to 
found God's kingdom in the earth and in the 
heart; to turn the alien into a friend, and the 
rebel into a subject. He does this by witnessing 
to the truth of our proper relation to God; by 
revealing the gracious character of God ; by exem- 
plifying in his own life perfect subjection to the 
Father's will. 

II. How should we seek this kingdom of God ? 

1. Earnestly. So much is implied in the word 
" seek." The word suggests to us the picture of 
a man in diligent quest of something ; as a shep- 
herd seeking his lost sheep ; a woman her lost 
coin; a man seeking for silver or gold; a pearl 
diver seeking goodly pearls ; the student seeking 
knowledge. This harmonizes with other Script- 
ures. Isa. 55: 5, 6; Matt. 13:45; Luke 13:25. 
This is not a common view. We are gradually 
losing the idea of luck, and learning that in the 
things of this world we must seek if we would 



88 SEEKING THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. 

find. There are still a good many people who 
believe that life is a lottery ; who expect fortune 
by a lucky speculation ; who are waiting to be 
borne on to fortune by some tidal wave of pros- 
perity; who are waiting for booms and bonanzas. 
But most people are learning better; learning that 
labor, diligence and earnestness win the rewards 
of life. 

But in spiritual things we are not yet so far 
advanced. We think that it is not by seeking, not 
by earnest effort, that we are to enter the kingdom 
of God; but it is to strike us like lightning ; that 
we are to stumble into the kingdom by accident ; 
that we are to find it as Saul found it while search- 
ing for Ms father's asses ; that the Lord will some 
day open our eyes and take us by the hand and 
lead us in in Ms good time ; or that the door is 
always open and we may enter when we will. 
Bat if we ever enter Christ's kingdom it will be 
by seeking it earnestly. 

This is the fact; but what is its explanation? 
The reason we have to seek the rewards of life so 
earnestly to enter into the kingdom of worldly suc- 
cess, or wealth, or fame, is twofold: 1. We have 
to seek things because they are hidden, and there- 
fore hard to find. Thus knowledge is hid in vast 
libraries, or multitudinous volumes of history, or 
in obscure phenomena of nature. Thus the forces 
of nature, electricity for example, were long hid- 
den and had to be earnestly sought. So the min- 



SEEKING THE KINGDOM OE HEAVEN. 89 

eral wealth of the earth. So voyages of discov- 
ery for hidden continents were necessary. So the 
laws and conditions of success in life are more or 
less hidden from ordinary observation and have to 
be searched for in order to be discovered. The suc- 
cessful man is he who has to ferret out these laws 
and conform to them. But is this so of the king- 
dom of Christ ? Is his kingdom a hidden kingdom ? 
It was once like leaven. But it has now man- 
ifested itself. If hid, it is to them that are lost. 
It is published abroad ; the sound of it is gone out 
like sunlight into all the world. Are not its laws 
plain? Is not the way into it such that the way- 
faring may enter, or is it, then, that there are so 
many seeking this kingdom that competition 
makes it hard to obtain? That is why it is so 
hard to win the prizes of life — there are so many 
seeking them. But there are not so many seeking 
the prizes of eternal life. Nor would the way be 
harder by competition. Spiritual privileges are 
bestowed by a different law. To give them to one 
is not to deny another. The increase of your 
wealth may be my impoverishment, but not so 
your faith. The need of struggle lies in the double 
nature which we have, animal and spiritual, which 
are contrary one to the other. It requires a great 
effort to keep our bodies under and our souls on 
top. Outward temptations assail us in our search 
for the kingdom, and seek to draw us or drive us 
off the track of it. Care for oar bodies calls us off. 



90 SEEKING THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. 

Many voices are crying to the right and to the left. 

2. Seek it first, because it is first. First 
things, first. That is a rule of business. When 
you go to your offices to-morrow, you will first give 
attention to the most important things. This thing- 
may be important because you have great finan- 
cial interests at stake ; that because your word is 
out. But you will not, if you are wise, consume 
the morning hours with trifles while weightier 
matters are neglected. Is there any weightier 
matter than God and your relations to him ? Those 
are the matters that are meant by seeking the 
kingdom of heaven. Is there any greater matter 
than the soul ? Is there anything more important 
than to escape the power of sin ? than getting a 
worthy aim in life, something that makes life 
worth living? Money-getting is no worthy end. 
That is, chipping off the soul and putting it in 
your money-drawer or depositing it in bank. 

Then, we do not truly grasp anything until we 
get a view of the spiritual end of life. Caiiyle's 
saying is true, that he who does not grasp eternity 
does not truly grasp time. He who understands 
nothing of the heavens knows little of the earth; 
for most of the movements of the earth are from 
forces that lie outside of it. It is only when we 
read life in the light of eternity that its lessons 
become plain. It takes not only a long time, but 
a true heart to know anybody or anything rightly. 
And that we can get only by coming into the king- 



SEEKING THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. 91 

dom. All duty becomes clear in this first duty. 
So we have no power to do the duties of life ex- 
cept as we come to Christ. Men are oppressed 
with a sense of weakness and failure. Beginning 
with self-reliance, they soon become discouraged. 
Christ restores them to a true self-confidence. 
Coleridge had power to inspire men with a sense 
of this power. This is why the publicans and 
sinners heard Christ gladly. He made it clear 
they were something besides sinners. 

3. We should seek the kingdom of God now. 
~Now is the day of salvation. Here is where so 
many stick. Almost everyone believes in the gos- 
pel. Few believe in the gospel of now. This 
policy of delay is the counsel of the evil one. You 
intend to do it some time. You may have wish, 
inclination, but purpose, resolves, settled intention 
of the mind, have you that ? I do not believe hell 
is paved with good intentions. If you intend to 
be saved at some time, you will make haste to 
fulfil your intention. 

Think not of deathbed repentance. I warn you 
against that refuge of lies. I have seen something 
of that. My observation is summed up in these 
points : 1. People that are insensible to God's 
mercies through life are not generally otherwise at 
death. 2. Mental and bodily conditions do not 
make the consideration of this momentous subject 
practicable. People are preoccupied with pain, 
mind lost in the lurid ravings of delirium, or over- 



92 SEEKING THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. 

come in stupor from which it can not be aroused. 
The deathbed is a good place to enjoy salva- 
tion, but not to seek it. 3. At best such repent- 
ance is a forlorn hope ; its genuineness is always a 
matter of doubt. A Christian physician in Boston 
had his attention called to this fact, and for years 
noted cases in his note book until he had the 
names of three hundred who had professed repent- 
ance on what they thought was their deathbed, 
and only three per cent, of the number after recov- 
ery remembered their repentance or honored their 
profession. A London missionary noted three 
thousand cases in his long life with almost the 
same result. This accords with the experiences of 
all who have made any observations here. There 
were cases of fever in which the patients remained 
perfectly rational and exceedingly religious, but 
could not recall a thing that had happened in that 
time on their recovery. It seems to me that such 
testimony is worth heeding ; that it is a powerful 
illustration of the text, and a solemn warning 
against procrastination. Therefore, hear his voice 
to-day, to-night, saying, " Follow me. Acquaint 
thyself now with God and be at peace." 



IX. 
TRIFLING WITH SPIRITUAL DUTY. 

"And they all with one consent began to make excuse."— Luke 14: 18. 

Jesus relied a good deal more on private and 
informal teaching, no doubt, than on his more pub- 
lic and formal discourses. So far from confining 
his teaching to the synagogue or the great assem- 
bly, he used the highway, the home, the place 
where a festal company was gathered, as fit places 
and occasions for his instructions. This indeed 
appears to have been the manner of his age, and 
it is greatly to be regretted that private and in- 
formal teaching has gone so much out of fashion. 
The commandment given to Israel in the law touch- 
ing the instruction of their children is worthy of 
our consideration. "These words which I com- 
mand thee," the sum of which was love to God 
and one's neighbor, " shall be upon thine heart, 
and thou shalt teach them diligently to thy chil- 
dren, and shall talk of them when thou sittest in 
thine house and when thou walkest by the way, 
when thou liest down and when thou risest up." 
That is only saying that these things should be 
taught at all times and places, and that we should 
by no means rely on public and official teaching to 

(93) 



94 TRIFLING WITH SPIRITUAL DUTY. 

do the whole work. This precept is fulfilled in the 
example of Christ. As he had opportunity he 
taught men, and he was apt to see opportunity 
where another teacher would have judged instruc- 
tion inappropriate. 

Here is a striking instance. One of the rulers 
of the Pharisees had invited him to a feast on the 
Sabbath day. He did not refuse the invitation be- 
cause it was the Sabbath, nor yet because the in- 
vitation came from a Pharisee who had probably 
a hostile intention in asking him. Nor yet does 
he feel himself under any obligation of silence 
because he was the guest of such a man. He 
would not be muzzled by the proprieties of the 
occasion. In the first place, there was a sick man 
present. He anticipated and silenced all objec- 
tion to healing him on the Sabbath day, and then 
healed him and let him go. In the next place he 
noted how certain of the more ambitious and ill- 
bred guests chose out for themselves the most hon- 
orable seats at the feast-table, those nearest the 
host or the favored guest, and rebuked their pride 
with a parable on humility, the point of which 
was, " He that humbleth himself shall be exalted, 
and he that exalteth himself shall be abased." 
Then observing that the guests were of the richer 
class of people, he puts in another parable, a plea 
for the poor, saying to one of them, "When thou 
makest a dinner, call not thy brethren, nor thy 
kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbors, lest they also 



TRIFLING WITH SPIRITUAL DUTY. 95 

bid thee again and a recompense be made thee. 
But when thou makest a feast, bid the poor, the 
maimed, the lame, the blind, and thou shalt be 
blessed, because they have not wherewith to re- 
compense thee, but thou shalt be recompensed at 
the resurrection of the just." This is not meant 
as a prohibition of all social entertainment of 
one's equals ; but it only brings out that the mo- 
tive of such entertainments may be simply the 
payment of a debt or an investment with the hope 
of larger gain, and that the consideration of un- 
selfishness and charity does not enter into such 
entertainments. But a true man will not be con- 
tent to do good or show courtesy to those only 
who show the same to him, but will extend his 
kindness to those who have nothing to give in turn 
but gratitude. It is a rebuke to all such as show 
no regard to those outside of " our set." 

The picture of rewards at the resurrection of the 
just, under the figure of a feast in which the great 
God communed with the righteous as with his 
guests and friends, and dealt out to each one his 
recompense, so much affected one of the persons 
present that he exclaimed: "Blessed is he that 
shall sit at that feast, blessed is he that shall eat 
bread in the kingdom of God." And then Jesus 
speaks another parable to show that though this 
entrance into God's kingdom is the greatest of all 
blessings, men do not generally regard it as such, 
but make a light matter of the invitation to make 



96 TKIFLING WITH SPIEITUAL DUTY. 

ready and enter the kingdom. "A certain man 
made a great supper ; and he bade many ; and he 
sent forth his servant at supper time to say to them 
that were bidden, Come ; for all things are now 
ready. And they all with one consent began to 
make excuse. The first said, I have bought a field 
and I must needs go out and see it. I pray thee, 
have me excused. And another said, I have 
bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them ; 
I pray thee have me excused. And another said, 
I have married a wife, and therefore I can not 
come." 

Now what one is bound to feel in reading these 
excuses is that these men are trifling. These ex- 
cuses are not seriously made. The real reason 
why these men do not accept this invitation is not 
that they can not, but they care not to accept. 
There is not only no desire to accept, but a disin- 
clination and a decision not to accept it. They do 
not want to go to this feast and they do not mean 
to ; but they would like at the same time to be 
civil and polite, and have, perhaps, at the same 
time, a secret misgiving that they ought to go, and 
so they seek to dispose of the whole matter with 
an excuse. They bid the servant : " Say to your 
Master, I would like to come, but it so happens 
just at this time that it is impossible. That field 
must be looked after to-day; those oxen must be 
proved at once ; and this bridal feast, you know it 
is impossible to put off that." 



TRIFLING WITH SPIRITUAL DUTY. 97 

Is not this picture true to life ? The great diffi- 
culty with most men is that they trifle with spiritual 
duty. They do not deny its obligations, still less 
do they support that denial with any reasons that 
are sound or serious even in their own estimation ; 
but they take refuge in their flimsy, threadbare 
excuses, which they feel, as they utter them, are 
not the real reasons of their refusal to follow Christ 
and seek the welfare of their souls. 

I am not to be understood as saying that there 
are none who feel that they have good reasons for 
deferring or refusing to accept the invitation of the 
gospel ; that there are none without or within the 
church who are harassed and hindered by honest 
doubts, by real difficulties, and that it is mere friv- 
olity or perversity which hinders such people from 
duty, and not obstacles of another and more serious 
sort. But these are not the persons brought to 
view in this parable, nor do they make up the 
great majority of those who refuse the great and 
gracious invitation of Jesus. They are in fact but 
a small minority. Most of the reasons given for 
neglect of spiritual duty are frivolous and futile ; 
not reasons at all, but mere excuses, as the parable 
plainly designates them. 

Take these three excuses which we find in the 
parable and which, in fact, are the most common 
excuses urged in apology for neglecting our spirit- 
ual duty; "property, business, domestic ties." 
With one man it is real estate. He has bought a 



98 TEIFLING WITH SPIKITUAL DUTY. 

piece of land and lie must hasten to see his bar- 
gain, and perhaps to find a purchaser at consider- 
able advance on what he paid for it. It has been 
observed that a boom in real estate, while it may 
add to the church treasurer's comfort somewhat, 
does not fill the pews of the church nor the hearts 
and lives of the people with love for truth and 
righteousness. Men plead their real estate as an 
excuse for remissness in religious duty. Yet every 
man of the least reflection knows that both in the 
acquisition and in the use of real estate he needs 
the guidance of religious principle, and so far from 
this being a reason of neglecting religion, it is in 
fact a reason for greater attention to it. The 
increase of property increases responsibility, temp- 
tation and peril, and there should be a correspond- 
ing increase of religious interest to counteract and 
counterwork the evils attendant upon this increase 
of substance. Ileal estate is a reason for religion ; 
it is only an excuse for irreligion. The same may 
be said of business. The Spanish proverb that 
" the busy man has but one tempter, while a thou- 
sand devils beset the idler," is only half true. It 
is true so far as the idler is concerned. But the 
temptations of the busy man are manifold also, 
and do not differ in number so much as in kind 
from those of the idler. The temptation of the 
business man is to make himself a slave and to let 
his business pursue him and destroy him as the 
sleuthhounds pursue the criminal or the slave to 



TKIFLING WITH SPIEITUAL DUTY. 99 

his death. Such a man needs religion to tell him 
that he must not only be diligent in business, but 
fervent in spirit, serving the Lord. And no one 
knows that better than himself; no one knows 
better that he of all men needs religious faith and 
motives to brace and guide him and save him from 
making his life a madcap's chase for a bauble. 
"When, therefore, he says he is too busy to be a 
Christian, he knows that he is trifling with his 
true interests ; that he is giving an excuse, not ren- 
dering a reason. 

And domestic ties, how often are these made to 
cover our sins of negligence and indifference ! Care 
for wife, children, home, making an honest living 
for one's family, duties in one's household. Every 
man who seeks the souls of his fellows and urges 
them to the highest duty, meets this excuse in a 
thousand forms and tones. And yet, my friends, 
do we need to be told again that we can build no 
true home without we have faith in Christ for the 
foundation ; that marriage, to meet its highest ends, 
must be a union of two souls in Christ — the husband 
must love his wife as Christ also loved his church, 
and the wife must reverence her husband ; parents 
must bring up their children in the nurture 
and admonition of the Lord, if they would bring 
them up truly; and children also must obey their 
parents in the Lord. It is religion which has 
transformed marriage from a mere compact of con- 
venience, to be dissolved at the pleasure of the 



100 TRIFLING WITH SPIRITUAL DUTY. 

strongest, to a league of indissoluble love, of 
imperishable affection, and has linked into one 
sacred and blessed trinity the words mother^ home 
and heaven. If you " have married a wife," then, 
or even live in faint expectation of having a home 
of your own, that is the highest reason for your 
accepting the gospel and conforming your life to 
its demands. And the plea that family care or 
duty prevents duty to your soul and your Savior is 
only an excuse, and a very poor one. It is trilling 
in a matter in which you should act with utmost 
sobriety. 

Let me notice, briefly, two other excuses which 
are often given as reasons for neglecting religious 
duty. It is said by some, in answer to our 
entreaties to accept Christ, that science has dis- 
credited somewhat the claims of religion and ren- 
dered it less worthy and less easy of acceptance. 
Now, being myself a friend of science, and having 
no sort of fear of its ultimate effects on faith, I freely 
admit its marvelous advance in the last quarter of 
a century, that it has discredited some views of 
religion and greatly modified others, and I strongly 
incline, if I do not fully consent, to its main con- 
clusions. But has science really touched the essen- 
tial matters of Christian faith and duty? The 
existence of God, the love of God, the revelation of 
his love and will in Jesus Christ and the hope of 
immortality — has science discredited these in the 
least or in anywise affected them, except to admit 



TRIFLING WITH SPIRITUAL DUTY. 101 

that they are above and beyond its power to attain ? 
And the duties which grow out of this revelation of 
God and his relations to us, the duty of repentance, 
faith, obedience, service and holiness, have these 
been in the least discredited by any science, 
ancient or modern ? Every considerate and compe- 
tent judge in the premises confesses they have not 
been, and owns, therefore, that no growth of sci- 
ence can make this faith unreasonable or this duty 
void. It can only serve as an excuse, never as a 
reason for unbelief and unrighteousness. 

But, again, the differences among Christians are 
made an excuse for neglecting Christian duty. 
These are certainly numerous and grievous, and 
yet, they should hardly be an insurmountable 
obstacle to one who desires earnestly to enter into 
the kingdom of Christ. For, after all, that is so 
simple a matter that no amount of difference or 
discussion can long obscure it to one who is 
resolved on knowing the truth, one who is taking 
his life in earnest. What is it to enter any king- 
dom ? First of all, faith in the king, the belief that 
he is what he claims to be, and therefore has the 
right to our lives and service. Second, the renun- 
ciation of all other authority and of all resistance 
to his authority in the past. That is repentance. 
Third, the expression of this faith and submis- 
sion in some public, appointed way. It is as to 
the way in which this expression is to be made 
that professing Christians differ. All agree that 



102 TRIFLING WITH spiritual duty. 

baptism is the proper way of expressing faith and 
repentance, but all are not agreed as to what is 
baptism. And yet all are agreed that he that is 
buried with Christ is truly baptized, or so nearly 
all that those who dissent may be left out of con- 
sideration for practical purposes. Why not follow 
that way of expressing your faith in Christ which 
not only seems to be most clearly revealed in 
Scripture, but which all Christians consent is a 
good and a true way ? After all, these differences 
only obscure and do not obstruct the way of duty, 
and he that is determined to walk therein will not 
fail to find it. It is only they who seek to escape 
duty who take refuge in excuses, which can never 
hide the way to such as long to find it and follow 
it. 

The point of what I have said then is this : 
that the reason of our neglect of spiritual duty is 
the disinclination and determination to neglect it, 
and not the excuses for it which we are wont to 
plead. And this I have tried to make clear by an 
examination of some of these excuses. If any- 
thing further is needed to confirm your minds in 
what I have said, you may find it in the very man- 
ner in which these excuses are given. They are 
uttered in such a languid and formal way, with so 
little of seriousness and earnestness, with such an 
air of one who feels that he must say something 
and who can say nothing better than this, and it 
is so plain that the person himself does not attach 



TRIFLING- WITH SPIRITUAL DUTY. 103 

much weight to these alleged reasons and does not 
expect us to respect them very highly, that it is 
really impossible to treat them seriously. It is, in 
fact, easier to argue with open atheism, with the 
most radical and mournful unbelief, and even with 
those who are given over to gross immorality than 
with one who hedges behind such trivial and de- 
lusive excuses as these ; and it is easier to con- 
vince open and defiant unbelief, than this easy- 
going and time-serving indifference. 

Now we should mark well the conclusion of this 
parable, that we may discern the divine dealing 
with those who make light of the soul's salvation 
and treat eternity itself as a trifle. " So that ser- 
vant came and showed his lord these things." 
Then the Lord of the house was angry and said, 
" None of those men which were bidden shall taste 
of my supper." God respects those who have real 
reasons for delaying to accept the offer of his love; 
those who lack opportunity ; those who are ignor- 
ant of their obligations through no fault of their 
own ; those who have honest doubts as to whether 
the gospel is an invitation from him, doubts, that 
is, which remain after earnest investigation and in 
spite of a humble and truth-loving spirit ; but for 
those who trifle with his message, who fritter away 
their great opportunity in vain excuses, which even 
they themselves cannot respect, there remain only 
the kindling of his anger and exclusion from the 



104 TRIFLING WITH SPIRITUAL DUTY. 

feast and the fellowship which his love has pro- 
vided. 

Matthew Henry tells a story of a great states- 
man in Queen Elizabeth's time who retired from 
public life in his latter days and gave himself to 
serious thought. His former gay companions came 
to visit him and told him he was becoming melan- 
choly. " JSTo," he replied, " I am only serious ; for 
all are serious round about us. God is serious in 
observing us ; Christ is serious in inviting us and 
interceding for us ; the truths of the gospel are 
serious ; our spiritual enemies are serious in their 
endeavors to ruin us, and why should not I be 
serious too?" Why not, indeed ? Why meet the 
most momentous duties with vain and frivolous 
excuses ? Life is a solemn trust committed to each 
one of us from God, and we must every one appear 
before him in judgment to render not an excuse, 
but an account of the way in which we have used 
it. Consider well these words of our Lord : " If 
I had not come and spoken unto them they had not 
had sin ; but now they have no excuse for their 
sin." 



OBEDIENCE AND ASSURANCE. 

"And hereby know we that we know him, if we keep his commandments." 
—1 John 2: 3. 

This, you will observe, is a somewhat singular 
form of expression. We may not only know God, 
but we may know that we know him. " Hereby 
know we that we know God, if we keep his com- 
mandments." Not only a singular statement this, 
but superfluous, you may think. Of course if we 
know God, we know that we know him. Does not 
knowledge imply certainty? If we know any 
thing, do we not of necessity know that we know 
it? Hence, we use knowledge and certainty as 
meaning substantially the same thing. You say 
in respect to a particular fact or occurrence, "I am 
certain of that ; I can not be mistaken ; I know 
it." 

Now, it can not be denied that of a certain kind 
of knowledge we can not well be mistaken, and 
we need no special assurance or confirmation of 
it. I say with some confidence : " I know you, 
your face, your voice, your manner, your temper- 
ment, to some degree. I do not need any assur- 
ance that I know you in these regards." No one 
needs to demonstrate that what I suppose to be 

(105) 



106 OBEDIENCE AND ASSURANCE. 

your face is really yours, and that my knowl- 
edge of you is not mere illusion, but knowledge 
indeed. But when I go deeper, and say : " I know 
not only your face, your form, and your manners, 
but your mind, your purposes, your thoughts, 
your motives, your heart," I may feel just as 
confident and may speak with just as much assur- 
ance, but my knowledge of you rests on a very 
different foundation, and is much more liable to 
mistake. If, for example, I am called in court to 
testify as to my knowledge of you I should testify 
with equal confidence of your identity and integ- 
rity ; I should say not only that I know your face 
and your name, but I know your heart to be hon- 
est and true. Yet an intelligent jury would attach 
a great deal more weight to my testimony as to 
who you are, than as to what you are. They 
would reason that in the matter of your face and 
form, your outward appearance, I could not well 
be mistaken, whereas it is easy to be mistaken as 
to the heart. "Man looketh on the outward 
appearance." He must of necessity. He has no 
power to penetrate beyond that. Only God can 
look on the heart. We can only see the hearts 
of others as we see our own faces, by reflection. 
And the reflection of a man's heart in his conduct 
may be a false reflection; it must always be a 
very imperfect reflection. You may say, there- 
fore, when such a man's heart has been disclosed 
to you in a peculiar way, not only do I know him, 



OBEDIENCE AND ASSURANCE. 107 

"but I know that I know him. "I had always 
thought him this ; now I know that my thought of 
my friend was true." 

Now our knowledge of the invisible God resem- 
bles our knowledge of the invisible mind of man. 
We cannot know him as we know his visible cre- 
ation ; as we know the sun, the stars and the solid 
earth. We can only see the invisible in these 
visible things, as we see the spirit of a man 
reflected in his conduct. The reflection is more or 
less dim and imperfect. But has not God made a 
fuller and more immediate revelation of himself 
in his word and, above all, in his Son ? And yet 
how are we to know that this word is such a reve- 
lation ? We believe that it is ; we accept it as con- 
veying to us a gracious and saving knowledge of 
him ; we believe that those who delivered this 
word to us were carried up into such communion 
with him that they were enabled to receive these 
truths from him, and to communicate them to us. 
But still the question returns, How shall we know 
this with such absolute confidence that we can say 
we know that we know it ? that we can rest upon 
it as securely and serenely as we rest upon the 
well established facts of history and science and 
experience ? 

Some would say that we can not rest on these 
two kinds of truth in the same way ; that natural 
and spiritual things cannot be apprehended with 
the same degree of certainty ; that faith can never 



108 OBEDIENCE AND ASSURANCE. 

be equal to knowledge ; that lie that walks by 
faith can never proceed with the same confidence 
as he that walks by sight. We must walk by 
faith, nevertheless. We soon reach the limit of 
sight ; then we must go on by faith or else turn 
back. He that will walk by sight only must walk 
a very short road. We have to walk by faith, of 
necessity, or else go nowhere. Still we can never 
be as certain of our road as when we walk by 
sight. The most we can say is that it is much 
more reasonable to walk by faith than not to 
walk at all. 

This is not the view, however, which the apostles 
take of walking by faith. They do not represent 
the way of faith as an uncertain road, which one 
must follow only because there is no better. 
They do, indeed, confess that we will meet many 
questions along that way which we will not be 
able to answer. " Here," says Paul, " we know in 
part." But this partial knowledge is nevertheless 
true and real knowledge, so far as it goes. Here 
we see through a glass darkly ; nevertheless the 
objects which we see so dimly, like the reflection 
of distant objects on a mirror, are real objects and 
not illusions. The gospel is compared by Peter to 
a lamp ; a feeble light indeed, compared with the 
glorious sunlit regions towards which we are tend- 
ing ; yet it is a true light, not a will-o'-wisp. So 
that though we may say we do not know all about 
this region through which the path of faith lies, 



OBEDIENCE AND ASSURANCE. 109 

nor all about that better country towards which it 
leads, yet we do know that the path is a true path 
and leads on to blessedness. Hear the confidence 
with which the Scriptures speak. Paul says, " We 
know that all things work together for good to 
them that love God ;" "we know that if the earthly 
house of our tabernacle be dissolved we have a 
building of God, a house not made with hands, 
eternal in the heavens." "I know whom I have 
believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep 
that which I have committed to him against that 
day." David speaks of the presence of God as 
being to him as the shadow of a great rock in a 
weary land. The traveler through the desert 
often takes refuge from the scorching and blinding- 
heat of the sun under the shadow of some rock 
that towers there in that solitude like an island in 
mid ocean. Often, too, when the deadly simoon 
sweeps furiously across the desert he hides him 
behind that rock until the storm be overpast. 
Seated under such a rock, sheltered from sun and 
storm, the servant of God was no more sure of the 
rock's presence than of God's presence ; he knew 
God as truly as he knew the rock ; his faith rested 
just as certainly and securely in the living God as 
his body reposed in the refuge of the rock. 

How do we take the heart and the help out of 
such words as these by saying that David and 
Paul and all the rest were inspired men and had 
the privilege of a more immediate and assured 



110 OBEDIENCE AND ASSURANCE. 

knowledge of God than is permitted to common 
men ! " They indeed might not only know God, 
but know that they know him. We must be con- 
tent with a less intimate and confident knowledge 
of him. They were permitted to walk by sight, in 
some degree at least ; we must walk by faith, and 
therefore they might well speed on with eager and 
jubilant steps, but we must plod our way heaven- 
ward with slow and often faltering feet." But if I 
understand inspiration it means this as to its 
object: the apostles and prophets were not in- 
spired for their own sakes, not simply that they 
might have intimate knowledge of God and con- 
stant communion with him, but rather that by 
inspiration they might bring others to the same 
intimate knowledge and the same blessed com- 
munion. They were not carried up to this height, 
as Moses was brought to the top of Pisgah, to 
view by sight the land which the multitudes at 
the foot of the mountain could only see by faith, 
that, instead of going down and leading the people 
up to this immediate view of Canaan they might 
remain there to die or make them a tabernacle 
and dwell there above the common lot ; but they 
were given this higher view of heavenly things 
that they might communicate it to others and 
bring them to the same knowledge of God which 
they themselves enjoyed; to enable the humblest 
follower of Christ to say with as much confidence 
as Paul : " I know whom I have believed," or to 



OBEDIENCE AND ASSUKANCE. Ill 

say as serenely as John ? " "We know that we 
have passed from death unto life." 

I. We come, then, at length to the question : 
How may we know that we know God ? how may 
we know him with a more absolute and immovable 
confidence ? 

1. There is an answer to this question that 
amounts to this : " We know that we know God 
through our memories. It is a matter of more or 
less vivid recollection with us. We have received 
the witness of the Spirit ; that is, there was made 
upon me an inward impression, instant and indel- 
ible by which the Spirit of God bore witness to 
my spirit that I am a child of God." The instant 
of this impression can never be forgotten ; it 
flashed through me like a shock from an electric 
battery. The memory of that shock is my 
assurance of acceptance with God. " Thereby do 
I know that I know him." 

Or this witness of memory is sometimes given in 
this way : I know that I know God because he 
has promised to acknowledge those who obey his 
commandment, and I have obeyed it. I remember 
well the hour of my obedience ; I recall the cir- 
cumstance ; I recollect the sincerity of my inten- 
tions, the purity of my motives, the warmth of my 
emotions, the peace which followed from yielding 
my will to the will of my Master. " Thereby do 
I know that I know him." 

Let me seem to throw no shadow over this sacred 



112 OBEDIENCE AND ASSURANCE. 

hour ; but let me, if I would be faithful, remind 
you that memory can not testify to what is, but 
only to what was. You may say, " Hereby I know 
that I once knew him, because I did keep his com- 
mandment," but you cannot base your present re- 
lations to God wholly on a past experience. It is 
as if you should say, when asked if you know a 
person to whom you were introduced years ago : 
" Yes, I know him. I have known him for years. 
I remember well the circumstances and ceremony 
of introduction and the impression produced upon 
me." But surely this introduction years ago, can 
testify nothing of your relations to that man to- 
day. We could not count much on a knowledge 
so remote. And hence you will notice that the 
apostle does not speak here in the past tense and 
in the singular number. He does not say: " Here- 
by do we know that we know him, if we have kept 
his commandment," but " Hereby do we know 
that we know him, if we keep his command- 
ments." It is the habitual keeping of his com- 
mandments, the daily obedience, that becomes the 
seal and assurance of our knowledge of God. 

II. What are some of these commandments in 
the keeping of which our knowledge of God is as- 
sured? There is, for example, the command to 
repent. Sin blinds our minds to the knowledge of 
God. The idolaters of Athens, groping their way 
after God among the altars, are not in so hopeless 
a case as the man who feels his way after God 



OBEDIENCE AND ASSUKANCE. 113 

with one hand, while he holds hard to his sins 
with the other. If you have secret sins that you 
will not give up, if you are guilty of sins against 
your own body or soul which you will not renounce, 
if you are wronging others either by enticing them 
to sin or defrauding them of their rights or taking 
advantage of their ignorance, their extremity, 
their passions and vices ; if you are only neglecting 
your opportunities and your obligations to your 
higher nature and to the higher nature of others — 
from all this you must turn utterly away ; of it all 
you must truly repent, or else you can have no 
more intimate knowledge of God. Rather you 
must lose what assurance you have and drift away 
into open disbelief. 

Then, again, there is the commandment to ac- 
knowledge Christ. " In all thy ways acknowledge 
him and he shall direct thy paths," says the wise 
man in Proverbs. Christ requires open acknowl- 
edgment of all his disciples. Confession is such 
acknowledgment ; baptism is such ; there are con- 
tinual calls to acknowledge him in daily life. We 
may try to conceal our relation to the Master, but 
if we do we shall only dissolve it. The lamp will 
not burn under the bushel measure. We only ex- 
tinguish it if we put it there. The Christian's life 
must be such a continual and open acknowledg- 
ment of Christ that all men shall know that he is 
Christ's disciple. Otherwise he shall soon cease 
to know it himself. Mr. Moody speaks of disci- 



114 OBEDIENCE AND ASSURANCE. 

pies who are all O. and O., meaning that they are 
out and out disciples. We must be out and out 
Christians or lose presently all assurance of our 
acceptance with Christ. 

There is also the commandment to love one an- 
other which the apostle had specially in mind in 
these words ; " Hereby we know we have passed 
from death unto life, because we love the brethren." 
Only to love the brethren is not to be possessed by 
strong and overpowering emotions towards them, 
so that as often as we see them we feel like rushing 
into their arms or taking them into our own. We 
may easily make too much of the emotional ele- 
ment in love. To love the brethren is to be tender- 
hearted, forbearing one another, and forgiving one 
another, even as God for Christ's sake hath for- 
given us, being imitators of God as dear children. 
It is to feel an interest in the welfare of our breth- 
ren, to visit them in their affliction, to weep with 
those that weep and rejoice with those that re- 
joice ; to sympathize with them in their successes 
as well as their failures, to applaud their virtues 
and overlook their faults, never losing hope or pa- 
tience with the weakest or most wayward, but 
trusting and working, that the long suffering of 
God may bring them to repentance. 

In Bunyan's great allegory, Christian departs 
from the plain road to the heavenly city and falls 
asleep by the way. Soon he bestirs himself and 
seeks to return to his pilgrimage, but finds that he 



OBEDIENCE AND ASSURANCE. 115 

has lost his roll of assurance, his certificate of cit- 
izenship in the kingom of heaven. There are 
many who have lost their roll of assurance. Some, 
it may be, have forged another and hope to have 
it accepted. Some are honestly deceived into ac- 
cepting a false assurance of acceptance with God. 
Some go on with faltering steps, doubting if their 
certificate will pass them, while some have turned 
back, deeming it useless to pursue the way, if they 
have no sure hope of acceptance at the end. The 
only way to be sure of acceptance at the end is to 
be sure of acceptance at every step of the journey. 
The means of attaining such assurance is given in 
the text, " Hereby we know that we know him, if 
we keep his commandments." 



XI. 

APOSTOLIC CONFIRMATION. 

"And when they had preached the gospel to that city, and had made many 
disciples, they returned to Lystra, and to Iconium, and to Antioch, confirm- 
ing the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith, and 
that through many tribulations we must enter into the kingdom of God. And 
when they had appointed for them elders in every church, and had prayed 
with fasting, they commended them to the Lord, on whom they had believed."— 
Acts 14: 21-23. 

We have described in these verses a case of 
apostolic confirmation. And it seems necessary, 
or natural, at least, that in order to determine its 
meaning we should compare it with modern con- 
firmation, as practiced among some most respect- 
able and influential bodies of religious people. 
The comparison is not undertaken in any invid- 
ious spirit, or with any design of depreciation ; but 
rather to make plain the meaning of this apostolic 
confirmation as here described. 

I. Roman Catholic, Episcopal and Lutheran 
communions all administer what is called the rite 
of confirmation. As practiced by these bodies, 
confirmation is the laying of the bishop's hands 
upon the heads of baptized persons, in order to 
their admission to all the privileges of the church. 
On the part of the confirmed person it is regarded 
as a public renewal of his baptismal vows. On 
the part of the administrator it is supposed to con- 

(116) 



m 



APOSTOLIC CONFIRMATION". 117 

fer the rights and obligations of church member- 
ship. The Roman church exalts it to the place of 
a sacrament, putting it on a level with baptism, 
the Lord's Supper, ordination, the marriage cere- 
mony and extreme unction. By the other commun- 
ions who practice it, it is deemed of indispensable 
importance. 

Now, without affirming or denying the propriety 
of such a practice here, I shall be content to remark 
the difference between this modern confirmation and 
that administered by the apostles. Indeed, there 
is scarcely one point of agreement between them 
except the name. Both the act and the design are 
utterly different. (1) As to the act, it lies on the 
surface that this apostolic confirmation was not a 
mere rite. It did not consist in laying holy hands 
on the heads of the disciples, nor any sort of pious 
manipulation. It was not a ceremony of any sort. 
It was not simply an external performance. It 
was a strengthening of the souls of the disciples. 
It was spiritual and inward in its character. 
What the disciples felt in this confirmation was 
not the pressure of the apostolic hands upon their 
heads, but the power of divine truth in their hearts. 
(2) And as the act was different from the latter-day 
confirmation, so was its design. It did not admit 
those to whom it was administered to the duties 
and privileges of the church, for they had already 
been brought into the exercise and enjoyment of 
these by their baptism. These were already dis- 



118 APOSTOLIC CONFIRMATION. 

ciples, with all the privileges and duties of disciples 
belonging to them and incumbent upon them. The 
design of this confirmation was to make them real- 
ize and esteem these privileges and discharge their 
duties with all courage and constancy. It was a 
strengthening and bracing of the souls of these 
newly-enlisted disciples for the conflicts of the 
Christian life. This, then, is the import and intent 
of this Christian confirmation. It is a spiritual 
cordial to enable the disciples to stand against the 
coming struggle ; a reinforcement of the soul in 
anticipation of the battle. 

II. The need of confirmation. I want to insist 
now on the need of this spiritual confirmation, not 
only for the first disciples and the apostolic age, 
but for all disciples in every age. This need of 
moral strengthening, especially in the early stages 
of Christian life, will appear from these three con- 
siderations at least : (1) In becoming a disciple of 
Christ a man makes the world his enemy, and he 
needs to be strengthened against that. (2) In be- 
coming a Christian the natural enmity of the heart 
against God is not destroyed, but only subdued ; 
he needs to be strengthened against this enemy 
within. (3) In becoming a Christian there is a 
certain exaltation and enthusiasm of spirit which 
will presently be followed by reaction. He needs 
support for that moral and spiritual reaction which 
always follows spiritual exaltation. In the light 



APOSTOLIC CONFIRMATION. 119 

of the history of these disciples as we have it in 
this chapter, consider each of these points : 

(1) In becoming disciples these people had made 
the world their enemy. Go back in the story and 
see how this appears. The apostles, sent ont as 
missionaries from Antioch in Syria, had come in 
their course to Antioch in Pisidia. Visiting the 
Jewish synagogue on the Sabbath they were 
invited to speak, and they told the story of Jesus. 
The first effect was agreeable. They saw little to 
fear at first in this simple and tender story, and 
were beseeching the apostles as they went out of 
the synagogue that it be told them again. But 
soon they began to see its meaning, and re- 
sisted it. The Jews were the first to take offense. 
"With characteristic shrewdness, they saw that if 
this story were credited, Jewish prestige and pride 
must go. In telling this story the apostles had 
made the Jews their enemies. They raised an 
uproar and drove them out of the city. Going to 
the neighboring city of Iconium they experienced 
the same treatment. So they came down into these 
obscurer and more retired places off from the main 
road, inhabited almost entirely by Gentiles, and 
again were favorably and enthusiastically received 
at first. But soon these Gentiles found out, by the 
aid of some malicious Jews who had followed the 
track of the apostles, that this gospel was as much 
opposed to Gentile idolatry as to Jewish bigotry, 
and straightway another and almost fatal assault 



120 APOSTOLIC CONFIRMATION. 

upon them followed. Because the apostles attack- 
ed the sins of the world, the world had become 
their enemy. 

Now to become a Christian is to do as these 
apostles did — to attack the bigotry and idolatry of 
the world, its sins, its ideals, its standards. It was 
a very simple thing these men had done — believed, 
repented, confessed, received baptism — but in do- 
ing that they had pledged themselves to wage 
incessant warfare against the idolatry of the world 
and all its sins. And the world would visit its 
opposition upon them as it had already visited 
it upon the apostles. They should be persecuted, 
as indeed they were in a few years, hunted like 
wild beasts through all this country. To encounter 
this opposition they would need to be strengthened. 

This same thing holds true to-day. Christianity 
has not changed in its opposition to these things ; 
and though the world has changed, it has not by 
any means renounced all its idolatry. To be a 
Christian is to wage war upon this with all that it 
includes. The world will repel the attack, if not 
by persecution, then by some other means. We 
need to be strengthened to resist and overcome the 
world, need it as much to-day as ever. How many 
a man makes a bold beginning, only to weaken 
alter a short struggle ! 

(2) Our greatest foe, however, in this struggle, is 
not without, but within. The old idolatry within 
us is not dead ; it is only in subjection. We need 



APOSTOLIC CONFIRMATION". 121 

to fight to keep it in subjection. This is illustrated 
in the case of these disciples. The Jewish con- 
verts would have to light that narrow, intolerant 
spirit which still remained after conversion. The 
devil of bigotry, though subdued, was not yet cast 
out. The Gentile disciple must contend against 
that old love of the vices and lusts of his idolatry. 
Every idolatrous festival would awaken his slum- 
bering lusts, as the cry of the wild beasts arouses 
the beast in his cage. How fully and vividly Paul 
describes the enemy within. Speaking of the 
Greek athlete, he says his greatest obstacle to suc- 
cess is himself, not his competitor. He must be 
temperate ; he must restrain his passions ; he must 
hold his body in subjection. So was the struggle 
in his own life. Again, in Rom. 7, what a chapter 
of internal struggle ! How true is that picture to 
life ! to every aspiring man's experience ! That 
same struggle that went on at Lystra, Derbe, 
Rome, is going on here. How we need to be 
strengthened for the fight ! For the fight is a good 
fight, but oh, how hard at times ! 

(3) Our need of strengthening arises again out 
of that spiritual reaction which is sure to follow 
our enlistment in the Christian warfare. There is 
always a certain degree of excitement in enlist- 
ment. The music, the pomp, the pageantry, the 
streaming banners and shining uniforms, the ex- 
ample of others, the impassioned appeals to patri- 
otism, the greatness of the cause — all contribute to 



122 APOSTOLIC CONFIRMATION. 

carry us away with the occasion. But when the 
dreary march begins, when the long, weary way 
opens before us, when the trumpet sounds to battle, 
and when this battle is so often a single, hand-to- 
hand, life and death combat, reaction sets in. So 
it is of all beginning, whether beginning school, or 
beginning business, or beginning life. It is easy 
to begin and easy to go on till the reaction of will, 
and revulsion of feeling come. 

So it must have been with these Christians at 
Lystra. In the first glow of their faith, and love, 
and zeal, when they first heard the gospel and wit- 
nessed the accompanying miracles, they were ready 
for anything. Even Paul's persecution did not 
dismay them ; they stood about the half-dead 
apostle ready to die with him. But presently, 
when the apostle should leave them, and they 
should be left to stem this dark tide of heathenism 
without the inspiration of his example and the 
encouragement of his presence, they must have 
weakened, and then they needed support. So it 
was of the Galatians. When Paul was with them 
they were ready to pluck out their eyes in love of 
him and his message. But on his departure their 
love grows cold and they almost lose faith in their 
former teacher and his great lesson. So it is with 
us. In times of revival we sing — 

" Through floods and flames if Jesus lead, 
I'll follow where he goes," 



APOSTOLIC CONFIRMATION. 123 

but later on we change our tune, and our words no 
longer ring with resolution and confidence. 

Then comes the need of confirmation. If in this 
time of reaction the soul is not supported and 
strengthened, it shall surely yield to the great 
assault. 

III. The Means of Confirmation. We turn now 
to enquire by what means the apostles strength- 
ened the souls of the disciples against these foes 
without and within. 

1. Instruction. They instructed them in the 
great law of conflict. It is through much tribula- 
tion that we enter the kingdom of God. Only as 
one is grounded in that great law is he prepared 
and panoplied for the great struggle. It is not an 
accident or an incident ; it is a necessity. " We 
must through much tribulation enter the king- 
dom." Kow the necessity for the conflict comes of 
two reasons. (1) It arises first in the necessary 
antagonism between the spirit of the world and 
the spirit of Christ. Look out into the Jewish world 
and see those little Christian communities planted 
here and there in its midst. See what is the aim 
of this Jewish world and what is its spirit, and 
see how it contrasts with the aim and spirit of 
these Christian churches. The spirit of the Jew 
was exclusive. He accounted himself the favorite 
of God, and every one else common and unclean. 
" Come not near, for I am holier than thou," was 
the meaning of all his actions. His aim was to 



124 APOSTOLIC CONFIRMATION". 

exalt the Jew, and his hope was for a Jewish em- 
pire which should make all the heathen tributary. 
How different the aim of the church ; to make men 
not Jews, but Christians, servants of Christ and 
servants of one another in his name. Between 
these two, coniiict is inevitable. Or look at these 
same communities in the Roman world, and con- 
trast them in aim, in spirit and in life. There 
could not but be conflict. It is because Paul dis- 
cerns the difference so clearly that he says, " it 
must be." Compare the spirit of Christ and the 
spirit of the true disciple with the spirit of the 
modern world. Pride, self-complacency — this is 
great Babylon, this is our spirit. Our aim is 
self-aggrandizement, self-indulgence, self-glorifica- 
tion. The church is the opposite of this ; we must 
have a coniiict. The carnal mind will contest 
every step of our progress heavenward. Jesus said, 
in this world ye must have tribulations. How 
could it be otherwise when we contemplate the 
spirit of the world and the spirit of Christ? (2) 
But in the second place we must have tribulation 
for our own sake. The perfection of our character 
demands it. It is only through this that we are 
fitted for the kingdom of God. The word tribula- 
tion illustrates this necessity. The whole earth 
abounds in instances and illustrations of this law 
of conflict. Every thing good, every thing substan- 
tial, every thing precious and enduring has come 
to us through much tribulation. The rock on 



APOSTOLIC COSTFIKMATION. 125 

which our houses repose is the product of those 
fierce forces which played upon our earth in other 
ages. The oaken beams which support them have 
been nursed in years if not centuries of conflict, 
rocked from their very infancy in the cradle of the 
storm. The boards which enclose us have their 
strength and toughness through long conflict with 
the forces of nature. The bricks have come to 
you through the fire. All the precious metals 
must be submitted to the furnace and the crucible. 
The diamond must be polished in its own dust. 

Shall we expect, then, that the most substantial, 
most precious, most enduring, most beautiful and 
glorious of all things, that consummate creation, 
should come to us without effort and without strug- 
gle? God hath predestined us to be conformed to the 
image of his Son. Christlikeness is our destined 
end. But to be made like him, is not this to be 
fashioned anew, not in body merely, but in mind 
and spirit ? We are to be made over again, to be 
transformed little by little to this perfect and glo- 
rious pattern. But is not this transforming process 
a painful one ? Must it not mean conflict and 
suffering and long struggle ? "We are like crea- 
tures deformed, whose limbs must be twisted back 
to their original shape and comeliness, and whose 
organs must be diligently and painfully exercised 
until they attain to their normal functions. Christ 
is the perfect pattern of manhood ; and we are to 
be conformed to him at whatever cost and pain. 



126 APOSTOLIC CONFIRMATION. 

After that we shall be ready for his kingdom. It 
was by instructing the disciples in this great law 
of conflict that the apostles confirmed their souls. 

2. But not by this alone were these disciples 
strengthened in soul and prepared for the coming 
struggle. By organization as well as instruction 
these disciples were confirmed. Not only exhort- 
ing them to continue in the faith and instructing 
them in the law of conflict, but in ordaining elders 
in every church did the apostles strengthen and con- 
firm the disciples. The churches were organized 
and officered for instruction and work, and so were 
strengthened. They were not left alone, without 
leading and guidance, each man to struggle on 
alone as best he could, but were provided with 
spiritual rulers and guides, who should be at once 
instructors and examples for them all. 

We may note some of the most important items 
respecting these elders or bishops of the church. 

1. Their qualifications for office. These were 
natural and spiritual. 

(1) First among these natural qualifications is 
the ability or aptness to teach. Timothy is 
charged by Paul to commit the things which he 
had learned of him to faithful men who should be 
able to teach others also. Ability to teach im- 
plies, first, knowledge, and then the talent of im- 
parting it. The elder should always be the best 
informed man in the congregation. 

(2) Another natural qualification was the abil- 



APOSTOLIC CONFIRMATION. 127 

ity to rule, which should be demonstrated by the 
wise rule of his own family, before the man is 
given rule in the church. There is no place where 
rule is more difficult, and requires greater wisdom 
and piety, than in the family, and when one is 
proven faithful to that trust, he may be called 
wisely to the higher trust of the church. 

(3) A third natural qualification is experience; 
not experience of the duties of this particular of- 
fice, of course, but experience of life, that contact 
with life which bestows wisdom, which teaches 
moderation and which develops in men the virtues 
of charity and kindness. The apostle expressly 
forbids a novice in this office, because, however 
good and worthy his intentions, his inexperience 
disqualifies him for the grave and delicate duties of 
the eldership. I heard of an elder in an adjoining 
state who stands at the church door with a cudgel 
in one hand and a theological shibboleth in the 
other, and whoever can not or will not pronounce 
his shibboleth is brained, metaphorically only, on 
the spot. The man's intentions are probably good, 
but he doesn't know anything. He was put in 
this place without any experience of the world or 
of life. He is an unscriptural elder. 

Coming to the moral and spiritual qualifications, 
we find them outlined in the epistles to Timothy 
and Titus. Among the chief are these : (1) The 
ambition of spiritual service. "If any man de- 
sireth the office of bishop, he desireth a good 



128 APOSTOLIC CONFIRMATION. 

work." The office is one to be desired. But the 
apostle goes on to show why it is to be desired ; 
not for the mere honor of office or the love of 
power or the ambition to rule, but because of the 
opportunities for doing good, for serving the king- 
dom of God, which it offers. Paul does not 
rebuke the desire ; does not say, as we sometimes 
do, that a man ought to have no ambition for 
office, but it ought to be a generous, unselfish, spir- 
itual ambition. That, so far from being an obsta- 
cle, is a qualification for office. 

(2) Then, a bishop should be a man of charac- 
ter, not a man of gross and glaring inconsisten- 
cies, but a blameless man; not a carnal, self- 
indulgent, intemperate man, but sober, self-con- 
trolled, dignified ; not noisy and contentious, but 
patient and conciliatory ; not sordid, self-seeking, 
greedy of his own gain, but generous, disinter- 
ested, devoted ; a man honored and beloved of his 
children, respected of his neighbors, without any 
grave reproach from any. This is indeed an ideal 
standard, and we can no more expect to find an 
ideal bishop than an ideal Christian. None of us 
have attained to perfection as yet. But every 
man who essays to be a ruler and teacher in the 
church should keep this ideal continually in view. 
Concerning the ordination of these elders to office, 
the Scriptures indicate that it was done by a sol- 
emn laying on of hands and prayer in the pres- 
ence and by the consent and with the co-operation 



APOSTOLIC CONFIKMATION. 129 

of the church. I do not understand this ordina- 
tion as constituting one an elder. He is consti- 
tuted by his own qualifications and by the call of 
providence and the church. But it is a public and 
significant acknowledgment of the authority and 
sacredness of his office. The church in laying on 
hands publicly acknowledges his right to teach 
and rule, confers its approval of his choice of his 
office and his selection to it by his brethren. Thus 
ordination, while it adds no grace to the ordained, 
adds dignity and honor to the office, and so sup- 
ports the man who enters it by the sympathy and 
approval of the chuch. This is in strict accordance 
with the teaching of the New Tes^amennt, which 
everywhere inculcates respect for office and rever- 
ence for those who have the rule over us. The one 
great duty of the eldership is the duty of disci- 
pline. I know there are some elders who will 
agree with that statement, who have a very differ 
ent idea from mine of its meaning. Discipline is 
not simply excommunication, though this is the 
too general ,view of it. Excommunication either 
means the failure of discipline or else a very ex- 
traordinary measure of discipline. Following the 
figure of Paul, we may say there are two great 
things in the salvation of a soul ; first, his planting 
in Christ; second, his training up in his service. 
The first of these duties belongs to the evangelist, 
the second to the elder or pastor. One plants, the 
other trains. Both of these things are to be done 



130 APOSTOLIC CONFIRMATION. 

faithfully, if God is to give the increase ; increase 
not in numbers only, but in character. The need 
of training is indispensable. The young vine no 
more needs training than the young disciple. He 
would not be counted a wise man who destroyed 
his young vines because they would not climb the 
trellis of their own accord. What folly is it, then, 
to punish the young disciple because he does not 
grow without training. What we need is not 
scolding nor coaxing, but training in the knowledge 
and service of Christ. 

Three means of training. First, Teaching. 
There must be knowledge of duty. Ignorance is 
the first obstacle to growth. The disciple needs 
to be instructed in the laws of God and the laws 
of life. 

Second, Counsel. Advice is cheap, we say ; 
but good advice, given in a fatherly, friendly 
spirit is rare — Jonathan's strengthening David's 
hand in God. Often the disciple is tempted to let 
go his hold on God, and needs to be strengthened 
by kindly counsel. 

Third, Example. A man may not be an able 
or eloquent teacher, but the great thing is for him 
to exemplify his teaching. When an old man rose 
in the meeting and said we ought to deal honestly 
with our neighbors and love one another, some- 
body sneered, "He is always sa}-ing that." 
" Yes," was the answer, " and he is always doing- 
it, too ! " 



APOSTOLIC CONFIRMATION. 131 

No worthier tribute could have been paid him. 
The bishop must walk worthy of his great voca- 
tion. 

So it was that the apostles confirmed the souls 
of the disciples. They instructed them in the law 
of conflict, they provided them with spiritual 
rulers and guides. And the result was that these 
disciples stood firm and strong against all the 
assaults of their enemies. Both the synagogue 
and the Roman senate made war on them. Jews 
stirred up the Romans against them. Caesar 
became jealous of Christ. But they stood the 
test. These spiritual captains led their followers 
against the legions of Rome and won the day. 
The Roman eagles encountered the cross of 
Christ ; the Roman met the Galilean in mortal 
combat, and the Gfalilean conquered. 



XII. 
THE CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 

" Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can 
do these signs that thou doest, except God be with him."— John 3: 2. 

DeTocqueville's dictum, that every discourse 
should begin with some incontrovertible proposi- 
tion, is very difficult of application to the subject 
of miracles, for the reason that scarcely any state- 
ment regarding them is outside of the region of 
controversy. Is there such a thing as a miracle ? 
What is a miracle, if there be such ? What is its 
design and what is its importance, either as an ele- 
ment or evidence of divine revelation ? — all these 
are questions of grave debate not only between 
believers and unbelievers, but likewise among 
various schools of apologists or defenders of the 
Christian faith. 

Much of the prevailing opposition to miracles is 
pure prejudice. The very word has become offen- 
sive to what is called the scientific spirit of the 
age. The temper of the time in which we live 
largely disqualifies us from a faithful considera- 
tion of the subject. Truth has contended long, and 
suffered much from the odium theologicum, and the 
contention has not yet ceased. To this hour the 
advocate of unpopular, and it may be, forgotten 

( 132 ) 



THE CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. ToS 

religious truth, is often silenced if we can fix upon 
him the suspicion of heresy. But it is more the 
fashion now to assail truth with the same weapon 
from an opposite and unexpected quarter, to excite 
against it the odium sclent I ficum or pliilosoplii- 
cum. As it was a daring thing in other days to 
propound any truth which could not be fitly 
framed into some system of religious philosophy, 
however plainly it might be read in Holy Writ, so 
to-day it is hardly less hazardous to own for truth 
anything which may not be easily reconciled with 
the reigning rationalism. Which only proves that 
human nature, whatever changes have taken place 
in its philosophy, is pretty much the same as ever, 
and is still ready, as of old time, to substitute 
dogma for reason and odium for argument. "He 
that addresses himself to the task of proving the 
possibility of miracles to our age," says Prof. 
Bruce, " must approach the subject under a feeling 
of discouragement. The advocate of miracles is 
very conscious in these days that he argues 
against the current of contemporary opinion. The 
oracles, scientific, literary, philosophic, pronounce 
against them. Matthew Arnold declares that the 
human mind is turning away from miracles. Dr. 
Strauss decrees that the miracle must take itself 
off. M. Renan announces that the whole body of 
modern science yields this immense result, that 
there is no supernatural." Miracles, these oracles 
will allow, may be harmless and even beautiful 



134 THE CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 

conceits ; but they are all conceits, the crude crea- 
tions of an innocent and infant age. Our modern 
maturity of mind repudiates them. 

These certainly are sweeping and high-sounding 
utterances. But please get your breath again and 
observe that they are only utterances, not argu- 
ments ; only assumptions and assertions for which 
no proof is presented or even proposed. This mod- 
ern mind, this scientific spirit, this current contem- 
porary opinion simply prejudges the case and 
decides adversely before the argument is heard ; 
declares, indeed, that there is no case and pro- 
nounces the very idea irrational and absurd. 
Having assumed that a miracle is impossible, it 
turns this assumption into an axiom, and gravely 
declares that every appearance of argument for the 
truth of miracles is necessarily delusive. That is 
to say, this scientific prejudice, reverses the rational 
and logical method, and instead of judging the con- 
clusion by the argument, judges the argument by 
the conclusion. Dogmatism in any cause is odious, 
but when it masquerades in the smooth and plaus- 
ible phrases of science, it is simply insufferable. 
Bigotry is never so baneful as when it passes for 
philosophy. 

If we consider the nature of a miracle we may 
see the cause of this philosophic prejudice against 
miracles, and also the unreasonableness of it. 
What, then, is a miracle ? It is the overcoming of 
a natural law by a supernatural cause. Not the 



THE CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 135 

suspension of law, for the law continues to operate 
even while the miracle is working. Thus a stone 
hurled from a human hand into the air overcomes 
for a certain time and to a certain height the law 
of gravitation, which tends to draw and hold the 
stone to the earth, and, operates just as powerfully 
w T hile the stone is going upward as in its descent. 
But another law above this law of gravitation and 
stronger than it, the law of volition, has overcome 
it for the time, and wrought effects in the world in 
spite of its operation. A miracle implies that 
there is a supernatural world above the natural, 
which at certain periods of history has inserted 
itself into the natural and overcome for the 
moment the operation of some of its laws. It 
does not imply that a supernatural agent descends 
into the natural world and overturns the natural 
order, but that such an agent overcomes, for the 
time being, the operation of some natural law and 
produces results that never could have been pro- 
duced if the law were left to take its course. 
Thus the miracle of Christ's walking on the water 
does not show that Christ abolished, for the time 
being, the law of gravitation so that he had no 
tendency to sink, but that by a superior and super- 
natural exertion of his will he overcame that law, 
and its operation was in vain. And it was be- 
cause his own will was joined by faith to the will 
of his Master, and the miraculous energy of that 
will was transferred to him, that Peter was able 



136 THE CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 

to walk amid the waves for a moment. TV ken 
faith failed, the connection was broken and the 
timid disciple, no longer able to overcome the law 
which was drawing him downward, began to sink. 
JSTow why should this conception of a miracle be 
offensive to the modern mind ? Chiefly for this 
reason, that it has in it an element of mystery. 
We can not discern or explain to our satisfaction 
how or why this supernatural cause intrudes itself 
into the natural world and overcomes its laws. 
The mystery of the thing is an offense to us. Be- 
cause our science has dissipated some of the 
things which were once regarded as mysterious, 
or at least dissipated some of our ignorance re- 
garding these mysteries, therefore we are become 
somewhat impatient and intolerant of all mys- 
teries. The modern prejudice against miracles is 
largely a prejudice against mystery. The thunder- 
bolt was once regarded as a miracle and a mystery. 
It was thought to be flung direct from the hand of 
the Almighty to avenge his anger upon his ene- 
mies. It was the flash of his eye and the voice 
of his wrath. It carried terror and dismay to the 
untutored mind of man. Our philosophy has made 
us wiser. We know that the lightning blaze is 
nothing but so much incandescent air, identical in 
nature with the little flame that flickers from our 
candle ; and that the thunder is simply the con- 
cussion of air currents whose principle is precisely 
that of a boy's popgun. The earthquake was once 



THE CEEDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 137 

regarded as a miracle. The heaving, belching 
fires were supposed to shoot up from the very abyss 
of hell. We know better now, and refer these 
things to their appropriate causes. Meteors are 
no longer falling stars, but fragments flung from 
far off worlds. The discovery of such things has 
somewhat inflamed our vanity ; our knowledge of 
second causes has made us forget our ignorance of 
the great First Cause and blinded us to the truths 
that lie outside of phenomena and beyond the 
reach of the telescope. 

But let us remember one thing when the mystery 
of a miracle offends us, namely, that our science 
has brought in more mysterious things than it has 
cast out ; it has demonstrated more mysteries than 
it has dissipated. The lightning, for example, is 
in some respects a more mysterious thing, now 
that we have learned a little about it, than ever 
before. The flashing, flaming air and the pealing 
thunder — what makes these ? An electric current, 
we say, which dashes with inconceivable speed 
through the heavens. What is that current ? It 
is identical with that which flashes over the 
wires along our streets. Beyond this we know 
nothing of the electric current. We have what we 
call hypotheses to explain its effect, but liypotlie- 
ses is only a mild, modern word for assumption, a 
sort of garment which we borrow from the Greeks 
to cover the nakedness of our ignorance. This 
electric current is still an inscrutable mystery. 



138 THE CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 

And the whole tendency of our modern thought is 
not to make way with mysteries, but to multiply 
them. What words are oftener on our lips than 
these, substance, cause, force, space? And yet 
they are all mysteries which appear the more 
deeply mysterious the more we ponder them. We 
can not hunt them down in the dictionaries nor 
corner them in the text-books. They baffle all the 
arts of explanation and transcend all the powers 
of human conception. These are words that sim- 
ply defy definition. 

There are three miracles in nature which are as 
stupendous as any recorded in revelation. And 
the science which shuts us up to the acceptance 
of these can not consistently deny the truth of the 
gospel miracles. There is the miracle of matter, 
the miracle of life and the miracle of mind. First, 
the miracle of matter. Nature exists. But has it 
always existed ? Is matter eternal ? or did it cause 
itself? Did the vast something spring from a vast 
nothing ? The wildest evolutionist does not pretend 
that from nothing something may be evolved. He 
contends that the great may be developed by grad- 
ual process from the small, but never has he dared 
to say that something may be developed from 
nothing. The world must have had a beginning, 
and however minute that beginniug may have 
been, it was a real beginning. Things cannot be- 
gin themselves. Now this beginning of matter 
was a miracle. That is, there is no other rational 



THE CREDIBILITY OE MIRACLES. 139 

explanation of it. Neither science nor philosophy 
proposes any solution of it. There is no solution 
but that it began in the creative will of God. It 
had a miraculous beginning. 

Then comes the miracle of life. " It is a fact 
as sure as the law of gravitation, that life can 
come only from life," was said before the most 
learned assembly in the world, the British Asso- 
ciation, by its president. The idea of spontaneous 
generation is absurd in itself. Who can think that 
a stone would ever come to life even if a million of 
years were given it to accomplish the task. And 
it is an utterly exploded idea among the teachers 
of science. If any thing may be said to be settled 
beyond all controversy and cavil, it is that only 
life can produce life. When you have accounted 
for matter by natural causes, if such a thing were 
possible, the problem of life would still remain 
unsolved. Whence began life ? Who made the 
difference between the pebble and the acorn, be- 
tween the stone and the moss which grows upon it ? 
There is no accounting for this difference but by 
confessing that the origin of life is a miracle. And 
now, when you have matter and life, can these two 
bring forth mind ? Can the tree learn to think ? 
Leave the vegetable to itself a thousand years ; 
let the cabbage head grow and develop itself 
through long ages — can it ever come to reason and 
think as does the human head ? Can life generate 
thought ? There may be brain in the brute, but; 



140 THE CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 

that brute did not derive its brain and power of 
thought, whatever it may be, from some form of 
life that had no brain. And that sense of obliga- 
tion and responsibility which distinguishes man 
from the brute, and really constitutes him an in- 
telligent being, in the true sense a thinking being — 
whence could originate this peculiar power of 
thought, but in the miraculous gift of the Al- 
mighty ? Here, then, the study of science reveals 
to us these three things, of which we can give ab- 
solutely no account, but to say that they were 
caused by some power outside and above the laws 
of nature. The origin of matter, the origin of life, 
and the origin of mind — these three things, accord- 
ing to the confession of the soundest science, were 
necessarily miraculous. They could not have been 
but for the direct operation of the divine will. 

But if we admit these miracles, why should we 
account all other miracles incredible ? If the orig- 
ination of life and the origination of thought are 
sufficient occasions for God to interfere in the order 
of nature, why may there not be other occasions 
for the operation of the same miraculous power ? 
If God desires to give to the world spiritual truth 
and spiritual life, and to that end must incarnate 
himself in the person of his Son, and authenticate 
his mission as well as reveal his character by 
means of miracles, and crown all by his resurrec- 
tion from the grave, why should it be thought a 
thing incredible with us that God should raise the 



THE CREDIBILITY OF MIRACLES. 141 

dead, or perform any wonderful work which might 
serve this gracious end ? Rather, is it not far more 
credible and natural to suppose that God who in- 
troduced life into the world by miracle and who 
made the living being also a thinking and respon- 
sible being, by the same extraordinary means did 
also at sundry times and in divers portions reveal 
his truth to man by means of miracles ? Do not 
these original miracles make not only credible but 
probable the miracles which revelation records? 



XIII. 
WHAT IS IT TO BE A DISCIPLE? 

Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into 
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.— Matt. 
28: 19, 20. 

So therefore whosoever he be of you that renounceth not all that he hath, 
he cannot be my disciple.— Luke 14: 33. 

Jesus therefore said to those Jews which had believed him, If ye abide in 
my word, then are ye truly my disciples ; and ye shall know tbe truth, and the 
truth shall make you free.— John 8: 31. 

By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to 
another.— John 13: 35. 

Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; and so shall ye be 
my disciples —John 15: 8. 

Among- the names by which the followers of 
Jesus are called in the New Testament, the chief 
are these : Believers, saints, brethren, disciples 
and Christians. And though it may be said with 
truth of many names that there is nothing in them, 
especially some that it is fashionable to give chil- 
dren in these days, it cannot be said that there is 
nothing in these Bible names. There are volumes 
of significance in them. If we will keep a clear 
apprehension of them we cannot get very far away 
from the truth. On the contrary, as we disuse 
those, substitute other meanings for them, pervert 
their meaning, we cut loose from our true moor- 
ings. For example : How do we lose our liberty ? 
Not so much by disusing the word as by perverting 
its meaning. Liberty is made the enemy of law 

(142) 



WHAT IS IT TO BE A DISCIPLE ? 143 

when really it is the child of law. It is made to 
be identical with license when in fact it is the 
opposite of license, the only safeguard against it. 
So despotism and anarchy both prosper by this 
perversion of liberty. Another example : Trade 
is demoralized not by disusing the words " baying 
and selling," but by misusing them. They must 
imply a real purchase, a delivery of the goods, but 
in present parlance they mean nothing of the sort. 
So speculation has come to mean peculation, and 
right dealing has given place to robbery. 

The New Testament words have a definite sig- 
nificance, which we must clearly understand and 
closely follow. Take those names referred to — 
believers, saints, brethren, Christians, disciples. 
What is the meaning of each? Believers shows 
what is the foundation and the ruling principle of 
our religion. It is faith. That is the foundation, 
the guide, the light. Not philosophy, not fancy, 
not knowledge, but faith, the definite and specific 
faith in Jesus as the Son of God. When we lose 
faith we cease to be Christians. Saints describes 
the character and the obligation of Christians — to 
be separate, holy, single-minded, not emaciated, 
contemplative ascetics, whose knees are stiff from 
long standing in prayer. Brethren describes our 
relation to each other in virtue of our common 
relation to God and Christ, and our duty in con- 
sequence. So far as we fail here we fail to follow 
Christ. Christians describes our entire subjec- 



144 WHAT IS IT TO BE A DISCIPLE ? 

tion to Christ and liis ownership of us. It was 
perhaps applied first by the world, and shows 
what was the first impression made by Christians 
upon the world — those who belonged to Christ 
owned an unseen Master, a dead man whom they 
believed to be alive. 

But I want especially to speak of the term " dis- 
ciple," and to show who are the true disciples. 
First, a remark or two on the significance and sug- 
gestiveness of the word. There are at least three 
ideas implied in the word disciple — humility, 
docility, progress. 

1. A true disciple is one who sits at the feet of 
his teacher, thus owning and confessing his need 
of knowledge. To call one's self a disciple is to 
confess one's ignorance, just as to enter school is 
to confess ignorance, and ignorance of those things 
in which we most need knowledge — God, man, 
duty, destiny. Such humility is the condition of 
all knowledge. Socrates explained his wisdom by 
saying, "All that I know is that I know nothing." 
So Paul, in 1 Cor. 8 : 2. The Ethiopian had the 
true spirit of a disciple when he confessed his 
ignorance : " How should I understand, except 
some one teach me?" "God resisteth the proud, 
and giveth grace unto the humble." 

2. Disciple implies docility ; i. e., desire and 
willingness to know. "I don't know" is the great 
confession of our age. This is the age of agnosti- 
cism. But do you care to know? Do you not 



WHAT 18 IT TO BE A DISCIPLE? 145 

rather delight in your ignorance ? " I don't know 
and I don't care." Is not that the spirit ? Many 
actually boast of their ignorance of divine things. 
The true disciple desires to know, and therefore he 
can be taught. He seeks for wisdom as for silver, 
and searches for her as for choice gold. Therefore 
he finds her. Two men may be equally conscious 
of ignorance, but this consciousness may beget a 
very different spirit in each. In one it may breed 
indifference ; in the other a hunger and thirst for 
knowledge. The last is a true disciple. 

3. Disciple implies progress. The apostle 
speaks of some who are ever learning and never 
coming to a knowledge of the truth. Such were 
the Athenians. They spent their time in nothing 
else but to tell or to hear some new thing. What 
they learned one day they unlearned the next. 
They changed their minds as often as they did 
their clothes. There be such now, who take up 
with every novelty that comes along and retain 
nothing. Then there are others who get as far as 
the alphabet and stop. They can recite a few 
familiar texts, a few stock arguments, a few points 
of doctrine, and there their progress ends. They 
need to heed the Apostle Peter and grow in knowl- 
edge. They need to go on to perfection. 

The True Disciple Described. 

1. He is one who is joined to Christ by faith 

and obedience. Matt. 28: 19, 20. This is the 
10 



146 WHAT IS IT TO BE A DISCIPLE ? 

divine direction to make disciples. They were first 
to be instructed as to the person, mission and glory 
of Christ in order to have faith in him. This faith 
was then to be declared in baptism. This baptism 
was not an act by itself. It was a declaration of 
faith and subjection to Christ, and a pledge of 
future obedience. When the person in this way 
declared Christ to be his sovereign, Christ in the 
same act acknowledged him to be his subject by 
granting to him remission of sins and the gift of 
the Holy Spirit, by which he became vitally united 
to him. This law still holds. In order to be 
Christ's disciples we must accept him in all his 
offices by faith and obedience. 

2. The true disciple is one who bears a supreme 
devotion to Christ. Luke 14 : 33. This is exceed- 
ingly plain and strong. It is not forsake, indeed, 
for we do not always have to do that ; but renounce 
all claim to what we have. Note the context. 
Great multitudes following Jesus, all claiming to 
be his disciples. He turns to them and explains 
what it is to be a disciple. If any man hate not 
everything that comes between his soul and his 
Savior he cannot be his disciple. He may try. 
But he will be like a man trying to build without 
counting cost, like a king going to war without 
considering the strength of his enemy. He will be 
like salt without savor, good for nothing, cast out 
and trodden under the foot of men. 

3. The true disciple must not only have supreme 



WHAT IS IT TO BE A DISCIPLE? 147 

love for the Savior, but like love for his brethren, 
his fellow disciples. Jno. 13: 35. You will note 
three or four things here. (1) The reason of our 
love. Not because the object is lovable and 
attractive. That is true, but we are not always 
able to see it. Not because those whom we love 
have done us some great kindness. This may not 
be. Not because we hope for love in return. But 
because they are disciples of Christ, wear his 
name, bear his image and are loved by him. We 
love them because we love Christ and because he 
loved them. (2) Note the manner of this love. 
"As Christ loved us." He loved us in spite of our 
faults ; he loved us when we loved not him ; he 
loved us so that he gave his life for us. So ought 
we to lay down our lives for the brethren. Some 
men are doing it. Giving time, money, interest, 
prayer for church. More ought to do it. (3) Effect 
of this love. "All men shall know that ye are my 
disciples." This is the kind of union that con- 
vinces and converts the world; the union for which 
Christ prayed. So the church won its way in the 
beginning. So it lost it in its progress. " See how 
these Christians love one another " became, " See 
how these Christians hate one another." (4) This 
love is not simply an emotion but a disposition 
to do good as one has opportunity. 

4. A disciple, indeed, is one who bears much 
fruit. Jno. 15:8. (1) What is meant by fruit? 
Turn to a well-known passage in Gal. 5 : 22, 23. 



148 WHAT IS IT TO BE A DISCIPLE ? 

We are not only to bear these things 
them abundantly. (2) Consider how our fruit- 
bearing is conditioned on our abiding in Christ the 
vine. We must be united with him. We must 
maintain the union, " Without me ye can be 
nothing." If ye bear no fruit ye shall be cut off. 
(3) The necessity of fruitfulness. We are not 
mere ornamental trees, shade trees — but fruit 
trees ; not upas trees, not cumberers of the ground. 
5. The true disciple is one who continues in the 
word of God. (1) He does not only begin ; he 
continues. It is easy to begin. How many will 
begin the year fairly ! but to go on through is the 
rub. " Beginnings are alike, it is ends which 
differ. One drop falls, lasts, dries up— but a drop. 
Another begins a* river." The reward is not to 
those who begin, but who by steadfast and patient 
continuance in well doing seek for glory and 
honor. (2) This continuance must be in the word 
of truth and the way which truth directs. Not 
in sin or in error, or in ignorance or sloth. (3) 
Rewards : Knowledge — "Ye shall know the truth." 
It is the thing we hunger for — to know. We are so 
compassed about by ignorance. Freedom : There 
is no freedom but by this way. Other ways open 
to us and promise freedom, but they do not bestow 
it. Freedom is that state of character in which 
one can wander the wide universe through without 
doing harm or receiving it. This comes by per- 
severing in the word of Christ. 



WHAT IS IT TO BE A DISCIPLE? 149 

Conclusion : Let us resolve to be disciples 
indeed, not desire it merely, but resolve it. Let 
us prove worthy of that legend which we have 
placed at the door of this building : Church of 
Christ — Disciples. Let us not only embrace the 
truth but continue in it, that we may know the 
truth and be made free by it ; let the fruit of 
the Spirit abound in our lives ; let us show to all 
men that we are true disciples of Christ by loving- 
one another ; let the love of Christ constrain us to 
renounce all for his sake and use ourselves and 
our possessions as stewards of his manifold grace. 
And, oh, ye who profess regard for the name of 
Christ, and who give great evidence of that regard 
by your presence among us to-day, know ye not 
that regard for Christ, admiration for Christ, asso- 
ciation with the friends of Christ, does not suffice 
to make a true disciple. You must be joined to 
him by faith and obedience. You must take his 
yoke upon you and learn of him. Wherefore do 
you call him Lord, Lord, and do not the things 
which he bids ? Obey his word and continue in it 
that you may be his disciples indeed. 



XIV. 
AGAINST INFANT BAPTISM. 

"For ye are all sons of God, through faith in Jesus Christ. For as many of 
you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christ. There can be neither Jew 
nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free, there can be no male and fe- 
male: for ye all are one in Christ Jesus.— Gal. 3: 26-28. 

The Epistle of Paul to the Galatians is one of 
the earliest of his Epistles, and shows us how soon 
the conflict between the Jewish and the Christian 
conception of salvation broke out in the church. 
The Jewish conception of salvation is substantially 
this : that salvation comes to men by reason of 
their relation to two persons, Abraham and Moses, 
a fleshly relation to Abraham and a legal relation 
to Moses. The Jew looked forward to a great sal- 
vation through the coming of the Messiah. In 
order to have part in that salvation it was neces- 
sary to prove two things ; first, that he was a de- 
scendant of Abraham to whose seed that salva- 
tion was promised ; and, second, that he was a 
faithful observer of the law of Moses. 

The thing which a devout Jew would be most 
careful to establish first of all was that he was 
a true son of Abraham. This he would do, if 
possible, from the sacred records of the nation in 
which the descent of his family was recorded from 
immemorial time. But a still more convincing 

(150) 



AGAINST INFANT BAPTISM. 151 

proof was that tie bore upon his body the mark of 
circumcision which revealed and demonstrated his 
sonship to Abraham. And the strict practice of 
circumcision was chiefly on this account, that the 
circumcised person might thus carry about with 
him the indisputable proof of his sonship to fath- 
er Abraham. But what of those who were not 
blood descendants of Abraham ? Was there no 
salvation for them ? They, too, might become par- 
takers of this hope of salvation through Abraham 
provided they submitted to circumcision and so 
became engrafted upon the Abrahamic stock, and 
were thus adopted into the family of Abraham. So 
to the proselyte circumcision was first a door by 
which he entered into the family of Abraham, and 
then a sign and a proof of his membership in that 
family. 

But a mere fleshly relationship to Abraham did 
not of itself suffice to secure salvation. Circum- 
cision bound the person receiving it to keep the 
law of Moses, and on those two, descent from the 
loins of Abraham and obedience to the law of 
Moses, depended the salvation of the soul. 

Now the Christian conception of salvation is, of 
course, utterly different from this. It makes sal- 
vation depend not upon flesh, but upon faith. It 
requires no other relation to Abraham than this, 
that we imitate the faith of Abraham. If we have 
Abraham's faith we are heirs according to the 
promise made to Abraham, which is simply a 



152 AGAINST INFANT BAPTISM. 

promise made to faith. Abraham is a type of all 
true believers to the end of time. Those who ex- 
ercise his faith shall enter into fellowship with 
him, though they have none of his blood in their 
veins nor bear the mark of circumcision by which 
his faith was sealed. 

JSTor is it necessary in order to our salvation that 
we sustain any other relation. to Moses than that we 
keep those two great commandments on which all 
the law and the prophets depend — to love God 
with all our hearts and our neighbor as ourselves. 
Those particular statutes which made up the law 
of Moses are no longer binding on us. 

This was the issue between Paul and those 
Judaizing teachers who had followed him. through 
the churches of Galatia and sought to refute his 
doctrine and undo his work. They sought to 
bring the Galatian Christians into a fleshly rela- 
tionship to Abraham through the rite of circum- 
cision, and to bring them into bondage to Moses 
through binding the Jewish law upon them. Paul 
tells them, when he writes back to them on hear- 
ing of the work of those Judaizers, that their sal- 
vation does not depend on any fleshly relation to 
Abraham or any legal relation to Moses, but on 
their personal spiritual relation to Christ. Ye are 
all the children of God, not through Abraham or 
Moses, but through faith in Christ Jesus. For as 
many of you as have been baptized into Christ, 
expressed your personal faith in Christ by baptism, 



AGAINST INFANT BAPTISM. 153 

have put on Christ. The old fleshly distinctions 
are done away in him. There is neither Jew nor 
Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is 
neither male nor female, for ye are all one in 
Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ's, then are ye 
Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the prom- 
ise, the promise made to Abraham, namely, that 
in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be 
blessed. 

Now could there be a more distinct repudiation 
of all claims to membership in the church which 
are based on fleshly considerations, and all prac- 
tices which are justified by consideration of flesh? 
Take the practice of Infant Baptism. What is the 
ground on which that is based? One of the 
grounds, and the only one which I will notice to- 
day, is this : that infants are members of the 
Christian Church in virtue of the faith of their 
parents, and, as members of the church, or "chil- 
dren of the covenant," as the phrase goes, are 
entitled to the seal of the covenant, which is bap- 
tism. That is, in plain English, in virtue of their 
blood relation to their Christian parents, children 
are entitled to be baptized, just as in virtue of 
their blood relation to their parents, Jewish chil- 
dren were entitled to be circumcised. But Paul 
says you are not the children of God by blood, but 
by faith. Could this language be addressed to a 
church, a part of whom were incapable of exercis- 



154 AGAINST INFANT BAPTISM. 

ing faith in Christ Jesus ? " You are all the chil- 
dren of God by faith in Christ Jesus." 

In harmony with this Scripture is the whole 
tenor of the New Testament. The member of 
Christ's church becomes such and remains such by 
the exercise of a personal faith. Take the great 
law for admission of members into the church. 
How does it read ? " Go, make disciples of all na- 
tions, baptizing them into the name of the Father, 
and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to 
observe all things whatsoever I have commanded 
you." The apostles are not sent simply to bap- 
tize people, but to make disciples, or learners, of 
them, of teach them what Christ has commanded. 
Surely such teaching implies ability to learn on the 
part to those taught, and therefore cannot apply 
to infants. Still more explicit is the commission 
as given in Mark, where we read, " He that be- 
lieveth and is baptized shall be saved." Here bap- 
tism is joined to faith and depends upon faith; 
without faith it would not be baptism. Its volun- 
tary character is essential to its validity. I re- 
cently heard a somewhat startling objection to 
this view of the case. It was said if baptism de- 
pends on faith, and only believers should be bap- 
tized, then we must say also that faith is essential 
to salvation, and only believers will be saved. 
That is, if this text denies infant baptism it also 
denies infant salvation. For it connects faith with 
salvation just as truly as with baptism. To which 



AGAINST INFANT BAPTISM. 155 

it is sufficient to reply that the kind of salvation 
contemplated in this text, i. e., pardon of personal 
sin, is denied to infants, for the simple reason that 
they do not need it. They have no personal sins 
from which to be saved, and therefore do not need 
the personal faith and baptism on which such sal- 
vation depends. 

The very names by which Christians are de- 
scribed in the New Testament show that infants 
are not included in the church. Christians are 
called believers. We read in Acts 5 : 14, " Be- 
lievers were the more added to the Lord, multi- 
tudes both of men and women." They are also 
called saints, those who have separated themselves 
from sin and dedicated themselves to the service 
of God, which could only be said of responsible 
beings. They are called disciples, that is, pupils 
or learners in the school of Christ. They are 
called brethren, those who are capable of exercis- 
ing love one to another. None of those terms 
would be appropriate to describe a church made 
up largely of unconscious and irresponsible in- 
fants. 

Not only are the antecedents of baptism such as 
exclude infants from that ordinance, but the utter 
silence of Scripture on the subject is equally 
against it. Nowhere in all the New Testament is 
there the faintest allusion to the subject, the 
slightest authority for the practice. Challenge 
those who practice it to produce one proof-text 



156 AGAINST INFANT BAPTISM. 

from tlie New Testament in its favor, and they are 
altogether nnable to do it. The nearest approach 
to it is in our Lord's words, " Suffer little chil- 
dren to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of 
such is the kingdom of heaven." There is not the 
remotest reference to baptism in that or to the 
membership of children in the church. Christ 
does not say here, as he is sometimes represented, 
that the kingdom of heaven is made up of little 
children, that of these is the kingdom of heaven, 
but of such as these, i. e., of those who have the 
childlike spirit, is the kingdom of heaven com- 
posed. 

We are told that though there is no command 
for infant baptism, there is evidence that the apos- 
tles practiced it, for they baptized whole house- 
holds. Now if households always contained in- 
fants, this argument would be conclusive. But 
how many households in this community have no 
babies in them. I have baptized whole households 
repeatedly, though I never baptize infants. We 
are told that the household of Lydia, the house- 
hold of the jailer and the household of Stephanas 
were baptized, and the inference is that there were 
infants in these households. Now, of two of these 
three households, we have it clearly implied that 
there were no infants in them. The jailer "rejoiced, 
believing in God with all his house." His whole 
household, therefore, were believers and had be- 
lievers' baptism. In that same epistle in which 



AGAINST INFANT BAPTISM. 157 

Paul tells us that he baptized the household of 
Stephanas, he tells us that the household of Ste- 
phanas had devoted themselves to the ministry of 
the saints. The whole household of Stephanas 
were therefore capable of Christian ministry (1 
Cor. 16 : 15). The houshold of Lydia is therefore 
the only one of which we are not told that there 
were no infants in it. And there is no evidence 
that she was a married woman at all. The indica- 
tions are that she was an enterprising tradeswoman 
who had come from Thyatira, in Asia, to Philippi, 
in Macedonia, to sell her wares, and her household 
was composed of her servants and subordinates 
who assisted her in the conduct of her business. 
At least we have no right to infer infants unless 
we know it was the custom of the apostles to bap- 
tize infants. 

This silence of the New Testament on the sub- 
ject is generally admitted, but we are told that we 
must not make too much of the silence of Scripture, 
for there are many other things of which the Scrip- 
tures are silent that we practice without scruple. 
We practice female communion, i. e., admit 
women tothe Lord's Supper, though there were no 
women present at its institution. I confess that it 
is very hard for me to respect such an argument 
as that ; but since it is seriously proposed, I must 
treat it seriously. Let me simply say, then, that 
the Lord's Supper was delivered by Christ to his 
apostles, and by them to the church, and in the 



158 AGAINST INFANT BAPTISM. 

cliurch we are told that there is neither male nor 
female, but we are all one, all equal in Christ Jesus. 

But the great argument for infant baptism is 
made from the identity and perpetuity of the 
church. The Jewish church and the Christian 
church are one and the same institution, it is said, 
and inasmuch as infants were members of the Jew- 
ish church, they are still members of the Christian 
church, there being no command to put them out ; 
and if members of the church, they are entitled to 
baptism as the profession and acknowledgment of 
such membership. The covenant is the same : 
there is only a change of seals. Baptism comes 
in the room of circumcision. 

This identity of the Jewish and Christian dis- 
pensations is a figment. In the first place, the 
Jewish dispensation was not a church, but a State ; 
in the second place, Jesus, while the Jewish insti- 
tution was still existing, spoke of his church as 
not yet in existence, as a thing of the future, say- 
ing, " I will build my church ; " in the third place, 
we are told that the church is not founded on 
Abraham or Moses, but on Christ, and could not 
be founded until Christ was manifest and his 
divinity demonstrated by the resurrection ; in the 
fourth place, so far from the covenants of these 
two dispensations being the same, they were 
opposites — one was a covenant of flesh and the 
other a covenant of faith ; one was entered by a 
natural and the other by a spiritual birth. JSTico- 



AGAINST INFANT BAPTISM. 159 

demus was an orthodox member of the Jewish 
church. Yet Jesus told him that if he was not 
born again he could not see the kingdom of God 
which he had come to establish. The disciples of 
Christ were thoroughbred Jews, in good standing 
and full fellowship in the Jewish church, but Jesus 
said to them, " Except ye be converted ye can in 
no wise enter the kingdom of heaven." That does 
not look as if the Jewish and the Christian insti- 
tutions are one and the same. It is true that the 
gospel was contained in the covenant made with 
Abraham ; but it was contained in promise only, 
and that promise was never realized in the Jewish 
institution. The covenant with Abraham, that in 
his seed should all the nations of the earth be 
blessed, was never fulfilled, was never in force 
until Christ came in the flesh. The identity of the 
Jewish and Christian covenants, the idea that the 
old and the new covenants were the same except 
in their seals, that the only difference is that bap- 
tism is substituted for circumcision, appears utterly 
absurd when we consider two things : First, that 
the Jewish Christians continued to practice cir- 
cumcision after they were baptized and became 
Christians. If baptism came in the place of cir- 
cumcision why did they hold on to circumcision 
even after they received baptism ? If such a sub- 
stitution had been made, certainly they never heard 
of it, for they went on circumcising their children 
even after they had received baptism. 



160 AGAINST INFANT BAPTISM. 

Another thing is that if baptism came in the 
room of circumcision it is very strange that the 
apostles did not tell these Jewish Christians so 
when they insisted that the Gentile Christians 
should Ibe circumcised as well as baptized. Jewish. 
Christian teachers went among the Gentile churches 
and said to them, " Except ye be circumcised after 
the manner of Moses ye can not be saved." How 
easy it would have been to put these teachers to 
silence by saying that baptism had now come in 
the room of circumcision and had superseded it. 
These teachers might have been reconciled to this 
slight change in the covenant. But the apostle 
taught them that the whole legal system, of 
which circumcision was a part, had been done 
away in Christ, that the middle wail which had 
separated Jew and Gentile had not simply had 
another door made into it, men entering by bap- 
tism now when formerly they entered loy circum- 
cision, but that it had been utterly broken down, 
and that God had made out of the divided races 
of humanity one new man, or church, so making 
peace ; that not only the seal of the covenant had 
been changed, but that seal, covenant, and all had 
been abolished utterly. 

But if there is no support for Infant Baptism in 
the ISTew Testament, and none in the argument 
from the identity of the old and new dispensations, 
we are asked to explain the early practice of it 
among Christians. We find it practiced among 



AGAINST INFANT BAPTISM. 161 

Christians as early as the second century. How 
are we to explain its existence in the church so 
near to the age of the apostles if it was not de- 
rived from them ? This is not hard to under- 
stand if we remember that these early Christian 
fathers, as they are called, if they were nearest 
the apostles were also nearest the heathen. They 
were saturated with heathen ideas and influences, 
and when they became Christians they brought 
many of these ideas with them into the church. 
One of these was the idea of original sin. They 
believed that infants inherited the guilt of their 
fathers and were all sinners in the sight of God. 
Another was the idea of baptismal regeneration, 
or the doctrine that water, when administered in 
connection with some mysterious form, could take 
away sin. Heathen libations and lustrations 
were supposed to have this virtue of cleansing the 
soul of sin. Now put these two errors together, 
i. e., that the infant soul is depraved and that water 
can cleanse depravity, and infant baptism easily 
follows. That these two doctrines were held by 
some of the early Christian fathers is simply a 
matter of history. Indeed the creeds that have 
come down to us from that day still attribute this 
emcacy to baptism when administered to infants. 
The creed of the Romish Church openly teaches 
the doctrine of baptismal regeneration. And the 
Episcopal form for the baptism of infants leans so 

strongly in that direction that many take its 
11 



162 AGAINST INFANT BAPTISM. 

teaching as nothing less than the regeneration of 
infants in baptism. It certainly seems more rea- 
sonable, if not more charitable, to explain infant 
baptism in this way than to attribute it to the apos- 
tles who never so much as mention it. The great 
German commentator, Meyer, attributes its origin 
to the stern doctrine of original sin held by these 
early fathers. 

I appreciate and approve the motive which many 
good people have in bringing their children to re- 
ceive baptism, but I mourn the mistake neverthe- 
less. These parents may think that they are do- 
ing their duty by their children and doing God a 
service in the practice of this rite. But in fact 
they sin against the child and against God. We 
sin against the child when we deny to him the 
right to volunteer in the service of Christ, to enter 
of his own consent and by his own act into cove- 
nant with Christ, to express his own personal faith 
in Jesus and his personal submission to him in 
his appointed way. And we sin against God 
when we teach for doctrines of revelation the com- 
mandments of men ; when we do in his name what 
he has never enjoined upon us, and bind his laws 
upon those who can not believe and obey them. 
Whatever the sincerity of our intentions, they have 
no warrant in his word, and therefore can not pro- 
ceed from faith. And whatever is not of faith is 
sin. 



XV. 

THE PERPETUAL OBLIGATION OF THE 
GREAT COMMISSION. 

And Jesus came to them and spake unto them, saying, All authority hath 
heen given unto me in heaven and on earth. Go ye, therefore, and make dis- 
ciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of 
the Son and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatso- 
ever I commanded you: and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of 
the world.— Matt. 28: 18-20. 

All who truly accept Christianity must accept 
it as a diffusive and universal religion. To deny 
its universality would be to deny its very nature. 
It would "be like denying to the sun the power 
of radiating its own light, or to leaven the power 
of diffusion, or to life the power of growth. These 
are all essential properties which cannot be denied 
without denying the very reality of the things 
themselves. 

But while there can be no proper difference of 
opinion among Christians about the diffusive and 
universal character of the kingdom of Christ, there 
is considerable difference touching the manner of 
its diffusion, some holding that it is to be diffused 
by the divine providence without the aid of man, 
others that it is to be extended purely through in- 
dividual influence and effort, and others, again, that 
it must be spread abroad likewise by organized 
co-operation of Christians, such as is represented 

(163) 



164 THE GEE AT COMMISSION". 

in our modern missionary societies. As an exam- 
ple of what may be called the providential method 
of spreading the gospel, I may cite the remark of 
Dr. Ryland, a great light in his daj^ among the 
English Baptists, who, when William Gary arose in 
a Baptist association to ask whether it was not the 
duty of Christians to enter into some practical 
co-operation for the conversion of the heathen, 
rebuked him sharply, saying : " Sit down, young 
man ! when God wants to convert the heathen, he 
will do it without your aid or mine." That view 
of the spread of the gospel, at that time so preva- 
lent as to be almost universal, is pretty well out of 
date now. 

There remains, however, a considerable number 
of people who think that the gospel is to be spread 
abroad among men by individual rather than by 
organized effort, and who, therefore, disfavor and 
deplore the modern missionary movement as being 
contrary to the proper principle of spreading the 
gospel, and, besides, both illusive and ineffective. 
Now, if this were only a protest against the over- 
value of organization, if it only stopped with say- 
ing to Christians : " You must not set too high an 
estimate on your societies, you must not trust to 
them to do all the work of evangelizing the world, 
you must understand that the chief part of this 
work must be done by individuals rather than by 
institutions, and by our influence rather than our 
affluence, by our work rather than our wealth," I 



THE GREAT COMMISSION. 165 

should heartily approve such sentiments. The 
idea that we have only to drop a nickel into the 
slot in order to see the missionary machine go may 
be a very comforting one to an indolent and easy- 
going faith, but it is altogether incorrect. The 
missionary machine must run, not by money sim- 
ply, but by faith, or it will soon run into the 
ground. And at its very best the machine can 
only do a comparatively small part of the work to 
be done. 

But when it is said that all the work of evangel- 
izing the world is to be done through individual 
influence and effort only, and through that natural 
and indirect contact with the nations of the 
world which a Christian's business may occasion, 
and when it is said in support of this idea that this 
great commission, as we call it, is really exagger- 
ated by the church of our age, that it is not so 
great as we suppose, that it was simply a charge 
to the apostles and not a charge to the church, that 
it was given for the first age of the church and not 
for all ages till Christ shall return — to all this I 
must demur with all my heart and might. These 
words that I have read for a text, " Go, make dis- 
ciples of all nations," were intended to be not of 
temporary, but of permanent obligation ; they 
were not for the apostles only but for all disciples 
to the end of time, and are as binding on you and 
me as they were on Peter and John. " By these 
words of the great commission we shall be justi- 



166 



THE GREAT COMMISSION. 



fied, or by them we shall be condemned." Every 
one of us shall give account of himself to God for 
his treatment of this last, great charge to his 
disciples. 

You may say, however, that I must not rest in 
this great and sweeping assertion of the perma- 
nent and universal obligation of this great com- 
mission ; I must prove it. Yery well. To the 
proof, then. 

1. I argue the permanent authority of this 
whole commission from the general admission of 
all who call themselves Christians that some part 
of this commission is still binding on the church. 
The duty of making disciples, of teaching them 
what Christ has commanded, is admitted by all. 
And the duty of baptizing them is also admitted 
by all except the Quakers, so far as I know. Now 
the obligation of making disciples and of baptiz- 
ing believers rests on precisely the same authority 
as the obligation to go out among the nations to 
this end. How can one consistently hold that it is 
proper to make and baptize disciples, but that is 
not proper to go out into all the world for that pur- 
pose ? The same authority which is behind one of 
these commands is behind them all. If we let go 
any part of this great commission, we must let go 
every part. We can not retain the obligation to 
make disciples and to baptize them while we 
repudiate the obligation to go into all the world to 
that very end. If we yield the obligation to go, 



THE GEEAT COMMISSION. 167 

we must yield at the same time and for the same 
reason the obligation to teach and baptize. For 
they all rest on precisely the same foundation and 
must stand or fall together. 

I do not, however, say this so much in the inter- 
est of argument as in the interest of clearness. I 
only want us to see to what this position, that the 
commission was binding only on the apostles, 
leads, not in order to restrain from following our 
logic to the utmost, if it is correct, for that we must 
do, but simply that we may test its correctness the 
more carefully. 

2. But I argue still more confidently the per- 
manent obligation of this commission from its con- 
nection with the great words which go before it. 
Christ has risen from the dead, and after forty 
days spent to a considerable extent in the instruc- 
tion of his disciples, he now sums up the signif- 
icance of his life, death and resurrection in these 
words : " All authority is given to me in heaven 
and in earth ; therefore go, disciple all nations." 
Or, as it is said in Luke's account : " Thus it be- 
hooved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, 
that in his name, [by his authority,] repentance 
and remission of sins should be preached among 
all nations, beginning at Jerusalem." That is, the 
great object of Christ's death and resurrection was 
that he might receive authority of his Father to 
empower his disciples to preach the gospel among 
all nations. ]S T ovv does it not seem an incredible 



168 



THE GREAT COMMISSION". 



letting down and belittling of these great words 
to say that the great object of Christ's life, death 
and resurrection was not that all his disciples in 
all generations might preach the gospel unto all 
nations, but only that twelve men in one generation 
should preach the gospel to so many of the nations 
as they could reach ? Is not this a tremendous in- 
troduction to a very short chapter, a stupendous 
preamble to an insignificant resolution? Christ 
died and rose again for what purpose ? Why, that 
twelve apostles might have the power and privi- 
lege of preaching the gospel among such Gentiles 
as they could reach, but when they were dead the 
story should stop just where they left it, or else 
creep over the world as best it could. Such a view 
is not only improbable, it is unreasonable ; it is 
not only unreasonable, it is preposterous and in- 
credible. 

3. But a third argument for the perpetual obli- 
gation of this commission is found in the very 
work which it enjoins. It was impossible for that 
work to be accomplished by any twelve men, how- 
ever diligent and faithful they might be. Not only 
would it be impossible for them to do it, but it 
would be impossible for them to direct it, with any 
number of assistants. The commission bears on 
its face the evidence of its perpetual obligation. 
What does that commission enjoin? First, that 
they should go out among all nations, into all the 
world. Now that was not possible to the apostles. 



THE GREAT COMMISSION". 169 

For at least half the world was not discovered un- 
til some fifteen hundred years after the giving of 
the great commission. In fact, the world was for 
the most part at that time an unknown world. 
The Roman empire covered a large tract of Europe 
and Asia and a little strip of Africa, and beyond 
that the nations were unknown. The apostles 
seem to have understood by the commission the 
Jewish world ; they afterwards learned it was 
the Roman world, but of the full extent of that 
great commission they had a very meagre concep- 
tion even when they died. "Not only were these 
nations unknown to each other, but they were also, 
for the most part, inaccessible to each other. 
There was among the greatest of them only a nar- 
row and feeble stream of communication, and 
among most of them none at all. Corea is now 
called by pre-eminence the hermit nation because 
so cut off from the rest of the world. But even 
Corea is coming into contact with the rest of the 
world. In the time of the apostles and for ages 
after there was not one hermit nation only ; there 
were hundreds, and the barriers between them were 
only gradually broken down. Even now, with all 
the marvelous facilities of communication which 
this age provides, it would be a vast undertaking 
for twelve men to evangelize the world in a single 
generation. In that age it was an impossible un- 
dertaking. 

But consider again what the commission re- 



170 



THE GREAT COMMISSION. 



quired to be done among these nations when the 
gospel had been brought to them. They were to 
be discipled and then baptized. Now this required 
at least two things ; first language and then time. 
There is no evidence that the apostles could speak 
any languages but the Greek and Hebrew. The 
Greek was the language which prevailed all over 
the empire, and the Hebrew was their native 
tongue, just as in our country the great majority 
can speak English, and many another tongue be- 
side. You have already asked yourself, however, 
if the apostles did not all have miraculously 
bestowed on them the gift of tongues, and were 
thus qualified to preach to all nations. That is a 
very general idea I know, but it is not correct. 
There is no support for it in the Scriptures. The 
gift of tongues did accompany the descent of the 
Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, but it was 
used not to preach the gospel, but to give thanks 
to God on behalf of all nations, because this out- 
pouring of the Spirit was for the enlightenment 
and salvation of all nations. The disciples did 
not use this gift of tongues to preach to men, but 
to praise God. And as they passed from the upper 
room to the temple speaking forth these praises, 
the people heard them and wondered. But when 
the time came to preach one man preached to them 
in one language, the Greek, which they all under- 
stood. The only references which we have in 
Scripture to speaking with tongues show that this 



THE GREAT COMMISSION. 171 

gift was used to praise God, and not to preach to 
men. Scripture nowhere tells us that this gift was 
bestowed upon the apostles to enable them to 
preach the gospel to all nations. 

Then the apostles would need, not only language, 
but time to make disciples. Those barriers of ig- 
norance and error which opposed the progress of 
truth among the heathen could not be overturned 
in a day. They had to be slowly undermined. If 
the apostles could have adopted Mohammed's 
short method with unbelieving nations, presented 
them the alternatives of faith or the sword, they 
might have made speedy work of their commis- 
sion. If they could have taken the method of 
Charlemagne in later history and marched the un- 
believing army into the river and had them bap- 
tized by companies and regiments, or if they had 
pursued the manner of the great Jesuit missionary, 
Francis Xavier, who had the Japanese assemble in 
multitudes, and sprinkled the baptismal waters 
upon them in a mass, they might perhaps have 
executed their great commission in their life time. 
But they practiced no such cheap and easy methods 
of evangelization. They first enlightened men's 
minds, then persuaded their hearts, and baptized 
such as believed in Christ. This took time. Paul 
remained three years in the one city of Ephesus 
and we know not how long in others. We are 
bound to think, therefore, that the gospel was not 



172 



THE GREAT COMMISSION. 



designed to compass the whole earth in a single 
generation. 

It is true that Paul speaks in Colossians of the 
gospel's having come into all the world and gone 
to every creature under heaven, but these can be 
only general expressions of the wide extent of the 
gospel in that age which are not to be pressed 
beyond the limits of reason and common sense and 
made to contradict the general teaching and tenor 
of Scripture. 

4. One further argument for the perpetual obli- 
gation of this great commission is found in the 
promise which is attached to it. " I will be with 
you always, even to the end of the world." It is 
true that the literal translation of this is, " I will 
be with you always, even to the end of the days," 
but that only strengthens the argument. The 
promise is not to the end of your days, but always, 
even to the end of all days, to the end of history, 
to the end of time, till days shall be no more. 
The argument is simply this, then : this promise 
reaches on to the end of time, to the last day in 
the history of the race, even to the end of the 
days. The commandment must therefore endure 
as long as the promise which is attached to it. 
They are inseparable. The limit of one is the 
limit of the other. If you can prove that this 
commandment is abrogated, you prove at the same 
time and by the same arguments that the promise of 
Christ's presence is withdrawn also ; for these two 



THE GEEAT COMMISSION. 173 

are joined together in the same commission and 
can not "be sundered without the destruction of 
"both. Christ says the promise is perpetual. "I 
will he with you always." The commandment 
must be equally enduring. 

I conclude, therefore, that the great commission is 
binding not for one generation, but for all ; not on 
twelve disciples, but on every disciple ; not on the 
founders of the church only, but on all the church 
to the end of time, for these four reasons : 1. It is 
admitted by all calling themselves Christians that 
some part of this commission is binding, but we 
can not accept a part without accepting the whole, 
since all rests on the same authority. 2. The 
words which precede the commission, the asser- 
tion of the universal authority of Christ in virtue 
of his death and resurrection, agree with its per- 
manent, but cannot be reconciled with its tempor- 
ary, obligation. 3. The work assigned in the 
commission, to go into all the world and make 
disciples of all nations, was so great that it could 
not be done in a single generation and must there- 
fore extend through many generations. 4. The 
promise annexed to the great commission con- 
templates that the work will go on always, even to 
the end of the days of the Christian age. This 
last great charge of Jesus to his disciples is not 
a charge to his apostles only, but a charge to the 
church to the end of time, the most solemn charge 
ever committed to men, on fidelity to which the 



174 THE GREAT COMMISSION. 

destiny of the church and of every disciple de- 
pends. I charge you therefore, brethren, before 
God and our Savior Jesus Christ, that this word of 
the crucified and risen Lord be preached as far as 
Iieth in us to every creature. Not only the salva- 
tion of the heathen but our own salvation depends 
upon it. As has been said, "The church that ceases 
to be evangelistic will soon cease to be evangeli- 
cal ; " yea, and the church which ceases to be 
evangelical will soon cease to be anything. Noth- 
ing less than the great ambition to evangelize the 
world can save the church from corruption and 
decay. She must reach out her hands into all the 
world or else they shall soon fall helpless at her 
side, prospered in nothing. We must believe in 
the whole gospel, brethren, or it will profit us noth- 
ing ; not only in the gospel of teach, the gospel of 
believe, the gospel of be baptized, but in the gospel 
of go. Let us not fear what some are pleased to 
call the "missionary hobby." That hobby goes 
somewhere, at any rate, which makes it differ from 
all other hobbies known to me. I know that our 
smart age is telling us that missions are a failure. 
But pretty much the same men are telling us that 
marriage is a failure, the church a failure, life is 
a failure, God is a failure. And so they are, all 
are failures to those who have no faith. But he 
that believeth shall not be ashamed. The true 
church of Christ shall never fail nor be discour- 
aged till he hath set judgment in the earth, and 






THE GREAT COMMISSION. 175 

the desire of all nations shall be satisfied in the 
love of Gfod. 



XVI. 
THE TIMID WOMAN'S FAITH. 

For she said, If I touch but his garments, I shall be made whole.— 
Mark 5: 28. 

The great interest felt by the people about 
Capernaum especially, in the ministry of Jesus at 
this time, drew throngs about him continually. 
At one time we read that the house where he was 
stopping was so full of eager attendants upon his 
ministry that there was no room to receive them, 
not so much as standing room even about the doors. 
At another time, after one of his most striking 
miracles the multitude came together so that they, 
Jesus and his friends, could not so much as eat 
bread, had not time for their accustomed meals. 
On the same day, apparently, there was gathered 
unto him a great multitude on the lake-shore front- 
ing the city, so that he had to withdraw from them 
by getting into a boat and putting a sufficient space 
of water between him and them, so that he might 
teach them as they stood there on the land. 

Now popularity, though it be so much coveted 
and sought after by some of us, is not the unal- 
loyed pleasure which it seems. A President's 
reception, for example, may be a delight to the 
throng of visitors and sight-seers who make up the 

(176) 



177 

long procession, but it is a sore tax on the strength, 
the patience, and the patriotism of the President, a 
sort of periodic purgatory through which he must 
pass as the penalty of his eminent office. Many 
public men in our country have literally died of 
their popularity, that is, of meeting the demands 
which the public appreciation laid upon them. 
Even when this popularity is the result of a true 
appreciation of a man's services to his country, a 
perception and recognition of real merit, as often 
it is not, it is perhaps more an affliction than a 
blessing. But when a man's popularity is founded 
on a mistaken view of his character, when it as- 
cribes to him a character which he does not pos- 
sess or desire, and when he knows that as soon 
as the people discern his real spirit and purpose 
they will desert and despise him, then this popu- 
larity to a true man becomes well-nigh insuffer- 
able. Such, largely, was the popularity of Jesus. 
It was a popularity which he knew was founded 
on a mistaken view of his character, a delusive 
expectation that he was a political and temporal, 
rather than a spiritual deliverer. Therefore it not 
only wearied and exhausted him, but it saddened 
and oppressed him, and he sought to escape the 
crowd by taking refuge sometimes in the desert, 
sometimes in the wild mountainous regions of the 
country, and sometimes among the heathen. This 
time he seeks relief from the Capernaum populace 
by an excursion to the country of Gadara on the 

12 



178 THE TIMID WOMAN'S FAITH. 

opposite side of the lake, a half-heathen region 
apparently, not only because settled by Gentiles 
as largely as by Jews, but because the Jews of 
that country had become largely heathen in prac- 
tice and held many of their national institutions 
and traditions in rather low estimate. But the 
conflict with the G-adarene demons and the destruc- 
tion of the swine in their exorcism so disaffects 
and dismays the Gadarenes that they beseech him 
to depart out of their country, and so he is driven 
to return to Capernaum. There the multitudes are 
watching and waiting to welcome him back. Not 
only do they desire to hear his teaching and behold 
his miracles, but there are troubled and afflicted 
souls among them who desire the exercise of his 
miraculous power in their behalf. Among these 
was a ruler of the synagogue, a man whose office 
was, as I suppose, more a temporal than a spiritual 
ruler, not so much a teacher in the synagogue, 
for it appears to have had no set teachers, but a 
sort of trustee and manager who looked after all 
the expenses and services incident to the syna- 
gogue work. This man, Jairus, had a little 
daughter at the point of death, and Jesus was just 
returned from Gadara in time to heal her. He, 
therefore, sought Jesus as soon as he had landed, 
the multitude already thronging him again, and 
prayed that he would go and lay his hands on his 
daughter that she might live. The Lord consented, 
and the multitudes, eager always to behold a 



179 

miracle, followed, not in an orderly procession, but 
in a tumult, pressing and jostling him on all sides. 
While on his way to the house of Jairus, a woman 
with an issue of blood, a chronic hemorrhage of 
twelve years' standing, having heard of his many 
miracles, and doubtless also learning that he was 
even now on his way to heal a dying girl, kept 
edging her way eagerly but timidly through the 
throng until she got near enough to touch the 
tassel or fringe of the long cloak-like garment 
which Jesus was accustomed to wear. For her 
faith was such that she said : "If I may but touch 
his garment I shall be made whole." And so, put- 
ting out her hand quickly, nervously, she touched 
the tassel. Instantly the hemorrhage ceased and 
she felt a new life bounding through her body. It 
is the cure of this timid yet trusting woman that I 
want us to consider for the rest of the sermon. 

Of course we must all remark that the woman 
was cured by faith. That is not only implied in 
her words, " If I may but touch his clothes I shall 
be made whole," but appears in the positive as- 
surance of Christ, " Daughter, thy faith hath 
made thee whole, go in peace." This lesson of 
faith is indeed the main lesson of this passage, 
and though it be so old and trite a lesson it can 
never be learned too well. " Saved by faith " — 
what does that mean ? Simply this, that we are 
saved not by a simple exercise of the divine ener- 
gy, we being utterly passive and inert in the forces 



180 



THE TIMID WOMAN'S FAITH. 



of salvation, but we are saved by the concurrence 
of our will with the will of God, the co-operation 
of our strength, however feeble that may be, with 
the gracious working of the Almighty. Faith is 
a general term for man's part in the salvation of 
his soul. And the necessity of faith is absolute. 
Without it it is impossible to please God, and 
therefore impossible to receive his favor. 

Of the faith of this afflicted woman we may ob- 
serve four things: its condition, its means, its 
character, its reward. Consider each of these in 
turn. 

First, we see in this woman's realization of her 
wretchedness the great condition of faith. We 
may conceive of her as being just as grievously 
and hopelessly afflicted as she really was, and yet 
ignorant of the nature of her affliction or else in- 
different to it. There are multitudes of people in 
the world who are mortally afflicted, who have but 
a few years, it may be a few months or weeks, to 
live, but who have no conviction of the deadly 
character of their disease and the nearness of 
their end. How difficult, how impossible it would 
be to induce such a person to put himself in the 
hands of a physician or have any faith in the 
remedies proposed. Ignorance of one's true condi- 
tion and the indifference which it breeds is one of 
the greatest hindrances to faith. Until one real- 
izes his danger he refuses all remedies. 

This woman had been brought to realize her 



THE TIMID "WOMAN'S FAITH. 181 

wretched and incurable condition not only through 
the pains which she had suffered but through the 
failure of all the remedies of which she had made 
trial. " She had suffered many things of many 
physicians and had spent all that she had, and 
was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse." We 
need not attribute this result wholly to the quack- 
ery of the physicians. It is true that the ancient 
physician, especially in the East, was generally a 
quack, as indeed he is too numerously in our time. 
But we may grant that these doctors did the best 
they could. There are a great many diseases 
which the doctors cannot cure. And the only end 
they served in this woman's case was to produce 
in her mind a deeper conviction of her utterly help- 
less and wretched condition. But in this they 
were doing her a better service than they knew ; 
for they were preparing her heart to receive joy- 
fully the word of Christ's power when she should 
hear it. 

Very much in this way God deals with the hu- 
man soul and with human society. The soul is 
ailing. It resorts to the physicians for help; to 
pleasure, to business, to learning and philosophy, 
to various other agencies which promise relief. 
But by all these expensive but delusive remedies it 
is nothing bettered, but rather grows worse. They 
only aggravate in the end the soul's wretchedness 
and prepare it to accept God's great remedy for 
soul-sickness, Christ and his service. Hainan 



182 THE TIMID WOMAN'S FAITH. 

society in every land, in ever age, is sick. The 
doctors of all schools and creeds are moved by 
all manner of motives, the highest and the lowest 
run to the rescue ; doctors of law, of philosophy, 
of science, of divinity, all gather around the 
social invalid and ply him with their remedies, 
each protesting that his is the panacea. We can 
not fairly say that by all these endeavors society 
is nothing bettered, but rather grows worse, be- 
cause many of them are honest but mistaken en- 
deavors to apply divine truth to the wants of men ; 
but only in so far as they do that do they help 
society. And in truth, their greatest service is that 
they do but deepen in men the conviction of their 
own misery, of the helplessness of all human rem- 
edies, and so prepare the way for faith in the Great 
Physician. There is comfort to be derived from 
both individual and social sufferings, Jin that they 
induce in the mind the condition of faith; they 
drive men in very desperation to the foot of the 
cross. 

2. We should note also the means of this 
woman's faith. Paul says that faith comes by 
hearing the word of God. So came this afflicted 
woman's faith. " Having heard the things con- 
cerning Jesus," says the account, according to the 
Revised Version, " she came behind and touched 
him." So faith comes always from hearing the 
things concerning Jesus. Her faith was not be- 
stowed upon her by miracle. It did not proceed 



183 

from her peculiar temperament. It was the pro- 
duct of the truth in her soul. If we want to in- 
duce faith in our own hearts or in the minds of 
others we must bring the mind in contact with 
the things concerning the kingdom of God and 
the name of Jesus Christ. How mach of the pre- 
vailing unbelief is due to the displacement of the 
divine truth by human traditions and opinions, 
making void the word of God by the command- 
ments of men ! " The things concerning Jesus " — 
this is the theme of the gospel, and it is the cover- 
ing up of these things, or the mixing them with 
things concerning merely human leaders and 
teachers, that has made faith scarce where it ought 
to abound. The story of divine power and com- 
passion as revealed in Jesus will ever produce 
faith in the hearts of men when faithfully and 
earnestly proclaimed. And to make such pro- 
clamation is the great duty and mission of the 
church. 

3. Consider next the mixed and imperfect char- 
acter of the woman's faith. It was an adulterated 
faith. It contained a large element of impurity. 
In the first place it was seriously marred by ignor- 
ance. She had faith in the power of Christ, yet 
she supposed that this power resided in his body 
or in his garments rather than in his gracious will, 
and thought it was enough if she might touch his 
garments. This imperfect faith had come to her 
through the imperfect reports of Christ's power 



184 



THE TIMID WOMAN'S FAITH. 



which had spread over the country. It seemed to 
be the view of the multitudes generally that it was 
only necessary to touch the garment of Jesus to 
be made whole. Her imperfect faith was the fruit 
of the erroneous teaching which she had received 
concerning Jesus ; and this is the cause of a great 
deal of imperfect faith. Then we note a mingling 
of confidence and timidity. She is very confident 
of cure. She says within herself : " If I may but 
touch his clothes I shall be made whole.' 5 But 
she fears to approach him openly, and approaches 
him from behind that he may not see her, as if she 
could steal a cure without his knowledge, and puts 
forth her hand quickly as if she would snatch his 
healing virtue from him without his consent. Her 
touch is a touch of faith, and yet it is a faith mixed 
with fear. She has not yet that perfect faith in 
Christ and that perfect love for him which casteth 
out all fear. 

Yet Christ blessed her imperfect faith. It is 
not necessary that one's faith be absolutely pure 
and full in order to bring God's blessing. It is 
true that the purer the faith the fuller the blessing, 
and yet a low degree of faith, and that much mixed 
with superstition and ignorance, may be gra- 
ciously blest of God, as it was in the case of this 
woman. The ignorant and crude faith of many 
believers should not discourage us. God can not 
only bless such faith but he can refine it of all its 
impurities. 



THE TIMID WOMAN'S FAITH. 185 

4. Now note finally the rewards of the woman's 
faith. He that truly comes to God — comes in the 
faith that he is, and that he rewards those who 
diligently seek him — shall never fail of his reward. 
The faith of this afflicted woman was abundantly 
rewarded. First, she got that which she most de- 
sired, her health. The fountain from which that 
hemorrhage had flowed for those twelve years was 
dried up and the flow was stayed forever. And 
not only that, but she felt the tides of health cours- 
ing once more through her body, and she stood 
there in the midst of that multitude as well and 
strong as any. She would no longer drag her way 
through the world the timid, shrinking, wretched 
being that she had been, but would be sound and 
well as she was in youth. 

Now health is an unspeakable blessing, and it is 
our duty both to preserve it when we have it and 
to seek it when we have lost it. And yet it is not 
the only nor the greatest blessing. If you are 
whole in body only you are not made entirely whole. 
You are only half- well yet. This woman's mind 
was still in darkness both concerning the gracious 
character of Christ and concerning her own rela- 
tion to God. Her body needed healing ; but still 
more did her mind need enlightening and her faith 
need purging of its dross of ignorance and super- 
stition. Jesus would not let her depart from him 
half-blest. She should carry with her the fulness 
of his blessing. She should not leave him think- 



186 THE TIMID WOMAN'S FAITH. 

ing that she had been cured without his will and 
knowledge ; that her quick^passionate touch had 
not been felt by him ; she should know him better 
than that. Nor should she go away rejoicing sim- 
ply that she was healed of her disease, but she 
should carry with her the still more precious con- 
sciousness that she was a child of God. And so 
he brings her to the confession of her faith, that he 
may pronounce his blessing upon it and acknowl- 
edge her as a daughter of the Lord. How gently 
he deals with her ! He does not turn to her and 
accuse her of seeking to steal her cure. He brings 
her to a voluntary confession of her deed. "Who 
touched me ? " he asked. The disciples are sur- 
prised. " Lord, the multitude throngs thee. Every 
one is touching you." But he knows a touch of 
faith when he feels it. That thrills him to the 
center of his soul. " He looked about him to see 
her that had done this thing." His eyes rested on 
the timid woman and " she fearing and trembling 
came and fell down before him and told him all 
the truth." But instead of the rebuke which she 
had expected to hear, he said unto her : " Daughter, 
thy faith hath made the whole : go in peace." 
Surely the sound of these words, the assurance of 
God's love contained in that word, "daughter," 
was more to her than her healed wound and her 
restored health. The joy that filled her at the 
moment of her healing was not to be compared 
with the added joy of being owned and greeted 



THE TIMID WOMAN'S FAITH. 187 

as a child of God, a daughter of the Heavenly 
Father. 

We may be sure that as often as we are healed 
of our diseases, we are healed by the goodness and 
power of God. But it does not always please the 
Father to heal the sickness of his children. Dis- 
ease often proves a blessing by bringing us into 
an experience of God's love which we had never 
had otherwise. Surely we are very dull if we have 
not learned that. But it is the will of God that 
our souls should be purged of all the plague and 
stain of sin. And when we seek this purification 
of heart by faith in Jesus and obedience to his 
commandment, we not only get forgiveness, but we 
receive with it the adoption of sons of God. Not 
only are we justified by faith, but we are all the 
children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as 
many of us as have been baptized into Christ 
have not only put off sin, but have put on Christ, 
and through our acceptance of him are ourselves 
accepted in the beloved Son as sons and daugh- 
ters of the Lord Almighty. 



XVII. 
DAVID LIVINGSTON. 

A SEBMON TO CHILDBEN. 

But I hold not my life of any account, as dear unto myself, so that I may 
accomplish my course and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, 
to testify the gospel of the grace of God.— Acts 20: 24. 

These are the words of Paul, the great apostle 
and missionary, when he was making his farewell 
address to his beloved church at Ephesus ; a 
church which was begun and built as the result of 
his missionary labors. The words teach us, in the 
first place, that Paul had a particular course to 
run, or task to finish, or, as we say now, calling to 
follow, which no one else could follow for him, and 
then that he esteemed the following of his mis- 
sionary calling as of more importance and value 
than his life, so that he would rather die than not 
go about preaching Jesus to the heathen. He did 
not count his life dear unto himself if only he 
could finish this course with joy. 

Let these words, then, serve as text for a sermon 
on another great missionary who has lived and 
worked in our day, and who may be called the 
greatest missionary, and indeed in some respects 
the greatest man, who has lived in the present cen- 
tury. I want to tell you something in this sermon 

(188) 




DAVID LIVINGSTONE. 189 

about David Livingstone, who was the first man to 
carry the gospel into the heart of Africa. 

He was a Scotch boy ; and that was a good thing 
to start with; because missionaries must have a 
great deal of prudence and patience ; they have to 
endure a good many hardships and suffer a good 
many privations ; they have often to be separated 
from friends and be surrounded by enemies, and 
they have to do a great deal of hard work. All 
this calls for faith and constancy, courage and 
plodding industry, and whether we are of Scotch 
descent or not, if we know anything of Scotch his- 
tory and character, we must know that Scotch- 
men are remarkable for all these things. 

Then, he was poor boy, and that many of you 
will think a misfortune. He had no opportunity 
to go to school for years as most of you have, but 
had to go out to work in a cotton factory in his 
native town at an early age and help to earn a 
living for the family. But so long as we have 
enough to eat and wear, we do not need wealth. 
It is better for boys to grow up poor than rich. I 
know it seems impossible to make boys or their 
parents believe that, but it is true, for a great 
many reasons that I cannot stop to speak of now. 
One thing poverty does for us is that it compels us 
to work, and he who has learned to work has 
learned one of the greatest lessons of life. 

This boy, David, not only learned to work so 
that his employers and his masters were impressed 



190 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. 

with his industry and good character, but he did 
not, as some do, refuse to cultivate his mind be- 
cause he had to work with his hands. He learned 
to love good books, and would often have a book 
open before him on the spinning-jenny while he 
followed his daily task. On Saturday afternoons, 
when his employers gave him a half-holiday, he 
would go out in the hedges to collect rare speci- 
mens of flowers for the study of botany or to the 
quarries for rare specimens of minerals in his study 
of geology. 

And yet he was not one of those good boys who 
could not play and joke and rollic with other 
boys. Like other boys he had to be punished 
sometimes. He tells that the last flogging his 
father gave him was for refusing to read a book 
called " Practical Christianity," which was his 
task on Sunday afternoon, and which he found 
rather dry reading, I suppose. 

He grew up to be a wise, active, sturdy boy, with 
a growing thirst for knowledge. But as yet, 
though he had good Christian parents, he was not 
a Christian himself, nor does he appear to have 
thought much about his duty of obeying and con- 
fessing Christ. He read a book about this time, 
which brought him to decide for Christ and made 
him resolve to devote himself to work among the 
heathen. China was the field of his choice. Bat 
about that time there was war between England 
and China and he could not carry out his purpose. 



DAVID LIVINGSTONE. 191 

Meanwhile a missionary from Africa, the famous 
Hobert Moffat, whose daughter, Mary, Livingstone 
afterwards married, was going through England 
appealing for missionaries to return with him to 
Africa. David Livingstone resolved to go and 
did spend some nine years in Southern Africa, la- 
boring among the savage Bechuanas, not only 
teaching them the gospel, but, at the same time, 
showing them how to dig canals, build houses, and 
till their lands. 

Now Africa, your maps will show, is a great con- 
tinent, about as large as North America, but in- 
stead of being thickly settled, like our own coun- 
try, having towns and villages and farms and 
railroads and multitudes of busy people, it is in 
great part a wilderness inhabited by wild beasts 
and infested by deadly serpents. It has indeed 
many tribes of men scattered over it, but these are 
ruled over by cruel chiefs who are almost always 
at war with one another, so that when they lie 
down to sleep at night they can never feel secure, 
but are always dreaming of some enemy pursu- 
ing them with a spear. 

There were wide fields, but instead of being cov- 
ered with growing corn and wheat, they were 
either parched and desert or else covered with 
thorns and briars and great, dense forests. There 
were beautiful lakes and great rivers, but no great 
cities grew beside them, nor did any great and 
noble steamers ply their waters. Except the frail 



192 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. 

and rude canoe of the savages, there were no 
Iboats to disturb their quiet waters. Africa was 
settled only on its edges, and in its interior and 
center it was the dark continent into which no 
white man had penetrated, and through which no 
white man had passed ; for you know that the 
native tribes of Africa are all of a dark color. 

And then the white people who lived on the 
coast, instead of trying to help these poor savage 
blacks and make them better, stirred them up to 
make war with one another, and then bribed the 
chiefs to bring them all their prisoners and sell 
them as slaves. So the Arabs and Portuguese and 
Dutch would have their gangs of slaves, hitched 
together like beasts, brought down to the coast 
and then put in slave-ships and sent to other coun- 
tries to be sold into slavery. 

Well, Livingstone resolved that he would go in- 
to this country and preach to these people the gos- 
pel and open up a way of communication between 
them and the nations of the world, so that they 
might learn how to support and protect themselves 
and cease to devour one another like beasts of 
prey. 

It was a perilous undertaking. For, as I have 
said, the country was a wilderness. There were 
no roads and no rivers that they knew of ; and 
they had no trustworthy guides. In some parts 
the country was desert, and they were in danger of 
perishing both from hunger and thirst. Then 



DAVID LIVINGSTONE. 193 

there were the wild beasts in their path. Living- 
stone had already had one encounter with a lion 
in which the beast crunched his arm between 
his teeth and left a mark and a maimed limb, by 
which his body was identified when he was found 
dead many years afterwards in the wilderness. 
Then there were savages, more cruel than the 
beasts of the forests, who would threaten and hin- 
der him, if they did not take his life. Meanest of 
all were the white slave-traders, who hated the 
missionary because they knew that his success 
would break up their wicked business. 

But, trusting in the Lord and loving his fellow- 
men even though they were degraded savages, 
Livingstone gathered a little band of natives who 
had been taught in his schools and had become 
devoted more or less to their teacher, and took his 
journey into the wilderness. 

I can not in one short sermon begin to tell you 
of his many and great expeditions into Africa, and 
the important discoveries which he made. I hope 
your parents and friends in buying books for holi- 
day and birthday presents, will look for some ac- 
counts of the life and travels of David Living- 
stone, that you may read these for yourselves. 
But you may form some judgment of his labors if 
you will consider the difficulties of the work, the 
sacrifices by which it was done, and the great and 
important results to the world. 

This little band of missionaries now marching 

13 



194 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. 

into the heart of Africa did not have a smooth 
road before them. They had to take their axes 
and often hew their way through the tangled 
brake and thicket. They were often stopped in 
their course by the jealous and suspicious savages, 
and though they would not contend with them, it 
was only by long persuasion and perseverance 
that they were suffered to pass on. Sometimes 
they were stopped by sickness and had to go into 
camp until able to travel again. Sometimes Liv- 
ingstone, who was a physician, had to turn aside 
and heal the diseases of the natives. One time a 
chief whose body had been ripped open by a 
rhinoceros, sent for the Doctor, and he rose from 
his tent and went twenty miles through the dark- 
ness of night and through the dense forest. This 
is the way they had to travel in their long jour- 
neys, one of which extended for about two thou- 
sand miles and took four years for its accomplish- 
ment. 

Then in all this time Livingstone had to be sep- 
arated from his family, to whom he was most ten- 
derly attached. His wife was a heroic and devoted 
woman, who gave her life for Africa. In one of 
the later expeditions, when they were able to 
ascend one of the rivers which he had discovered 
in a steam yacht furnished by the English govern- 
ment, Mrs. Livingstone accompanied him, but died 
on the journey, and was buried there in that lonely 
land under a large tree by the riverside. Her hus- 



DAVID LIVINGSTONE. 195 

band turned from her grave, saying, " I shall do 
my duty still, but it is with a darkened horizon 
that I set about it." 

The results of Livingstone's explorations in 
Africa are so great and wonderful that we all can 
understand them. Columbus, you all know, dis- 
covered America. It may almost be said that 
Livingstone discovered Africa. We have known 
the name of the country for a long time, but hardly 
anything more. If you could see the map of 
Africa which we had to study when we were chil- 
dren and put it beside that taught in your schools, 
you would see an amazing difference. Our map 
of Africa was mostly blank, or else it was fiction 
and guess work. We knew as little about the in- 
habitants of Central Africa as we do about the 
man in the moon. Now steamboats are plying her 
lakes and rivers, towns and villages are springing 
up in the midst of her wilds, and by the time some 
of these boys here are grown to be men railroads 
and steam-cars will carry travelers through the 
heart of Africa and her savage tribes will have 
become peaceful citizens tilling the soil. All this 
has come of the courage, the faith, the simple 
devotion to duty, which made David Livingstone 
what he was, the good soldier and faithful servant 
of Jesus Christ. 

Let us stop here in the middle of this great life 
and learn one or two of its simple lessons. First, 
let us learn to honor and reverence the very word 



196 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. 

missionary. Let this man's life teach us how- 
great a class they are and what a great work they 
are doing. Let us think of them while they, far 
from home and friends, and amid strangers and 
enemies often, are telling of Jesus and his love. 
Let us remember them in our prayers, and divide 
with them our earnings and our savings, that their 
good work may go on. And let us learn from the 
example of this good man to live true and faithful 
lives, devoted to our fellowmen and to the name 
of Jesus Christ. 

When Livingstone had returned from one of his 
long expeditions he came home to England to 
plead with his country to send explorers and mis- 
sionaries into benighted Africa. The fame of his 
travels had gone abroad among the people. Great 
crowds flocked to hear him. Nobles and lords 
gave great dinners in his honor. The newspapers 
were full of his praise. A vain and selfish man 
would have had his head turned by so much 
honor. A sordid man would have made money 
out of it. But the great missionary entirely for- 
got himself in his plea for the poor savages. As 
often as they asked him to speak, he did not tell 
what he had seen and done or of the great and 
wonderful country he had explored, but he began 
to tell about the miserable condition of the heath- 
en, about the horrors of the slave-trade, and to 
urge his countrymen to come to the rescue of 
bleeding Africa. Instead of pointing to himself 



DAVID LIVINGSTONE. 197 

he always stretched out his hand towards Africa 
and prayed his people to send her help. We can- 
not all be like Livingstone in fame, but we can be 
like him in unselfish service of others. We can- 
not all be famous, but we can all be faithful. And 
if we are faithful, even in a humble lot and a 
lowly sphere, God will see to it that our faithful- 
ness is rewarded with a crown of life that fadeth 
not away. 



XVIII. 

THE CHILDLIKE SPIRIT. 

Whosoever shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in 
the kingdom of heaven.— Matt. 18: 4. 

Verily I say unto you, whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a 
little child, he shall in no wise enter therein.— Mark 10: 15. 

This passage opens at the point where Jesus 
has taken up his active ministry again after a 
period of retirement and comparative rest. Com- 
parative only, for even in the remote regions of 
Csesarea Philippi, whither he had withdrawn with 
his disciples, there were still multitudes to be in- 
structed, demons to be cast out, and diseases to be 
healed. Only the pressure upon him was not so 
great in this thinly-settled region as it had been in 
the densely-populated country of Galilee. Let it 
be remembered also that Jesus employed a part of 
this period of retirement in the instruction of his 
disciples, both respecting his glorious person as 
the Son of God and his approaching sufferings and 
death. He had not only applauded the confession 
of Peter that he was the Messiah, the Son of the 
living God, but had confirmed the truth of that 
confession by his glorious transfiguration in the 
mountain. At the same time he had predicted to 
his disciples repeatedly and in plainest words that 
he must suffer many things of the chief priests and 

(198) 









THE CHILDLIKE SPIEIT. 199 

elders and scribes and be crucified, and that who- 
soever would be his disciple must also deny him- 
self and take up his cross and follow the example 
of his Master's sufferings. 

Now they are returning from this retirement and 
these instructions, to Capernaum and the Galilean 
multitudes, and are soon to set out on the last 
journey to Jerusalem, where the prophecy of the 
crucifixion is to have speedy fulfillment. What im- 
pression have these teachings left upon the minds 
of his disciples ? How well have they learned the 
lesson which their Master has been trying to teach 
them, namely, that he must through sufferings 
enter into his glory ? Very poorly indeed. They 
were, indeed, well convinced that he should enter 
into his glory, that he was the great Messiah who 
should come into the world, and that he was about 
to establish his kingdom ; but the idea that he 
should suffer, that he should come to his throne by 
way of the cross and the sepulchre, and that they 
also must enter his kingdom through self-denial 
and humiliation, this part of their lesson they had 
not learned at all. Consequently they are return- 
ing from this retirement in very different spirit 
from their Master. He walks on before his disci- 
ples resolute indeed, but sobered and saddened by 
the shadow of the cross which is already falling 
across his way. But the disciples who follow him 
in the distance do not see that shadow. They see 
rather, or think they do, the glory of the Mes- 



200 THE CHILDLIKE SPIRIT. 

sianic kingdom soon to break upon them. And 
their joy in its approach would be perfect but for 
this single question : " Who shall be greatest in 
this glorious kingdom ? Shall it be Peter or 
Andrew, James or John, Simon or Jude, or some 
one of the others?" Each doubtless could give 
convincing reasons why he should be elevated to 
the highest place ; for what office-seeker ever yet 
doubted that he was the best man for the place ? 
or ever lacked reasons to remove the doubts of 
others? Andrew was the first to follow Jesus, 
Peter was given the keys of the kingdom, 
John was the beloved disciple, and no doubt each 
one of the others had some argument to show that 
he ought to be preferred above all the rest. At 
any rate, the dispute waxed so loud that it was 
overheard by Jesus, though not immediately re- 
buked by him. He did not turn upon them in the 
way and sharply reprove them for this self-seek- 
ing and ambitious spirit. He left them to have it 
out for the time. Bat when the journey was ended 
and he had reached Capernaum, and the whole 
company had gone into a house, probably that of 
Peter, he calls them about him and asks them : 
" What was it that ye disputed among yourselves 
by the way?" At first they were silent. They 
saw at once that there was something of meanness 
and littleness in the dispute, something unworthy 
of their Master. Bat presently they confessed 
that they were disputing about the pre-eminence. 



! 



THE CHILDLIKE SPIRIT. 201 

And then one of them followed the confession with 
the question : " Master, tell us, who shall be 
greatest in the kingdom of heaven ?" 

There was a child in the house, Peter's child, 
perhaps. Jesus called that little child unto him 
and set him in the midst of them and said: " Ex- 
cept ye turn and become as little children ye shall 
not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever 
shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little 
child, he shall not enter therein." Without the 
childlike spirit ye not only shall not have emi- 
nence in this kingdom, but ye can not have en- 
trance into it. All the conditions of entering 
Christ's kingdom, and all the laws of promotion 
after one has entered it, are summed up in this one 
word — childlikeness. All the commandments of 
Christ to his disciples are comprehended in this 
one : " Become as a little child." When he 
wants to set before us the fittest type, the best rep- 
resentation, the thing most closely resembling a 
true disciple, he calls a little child to him, first 
setting him in their midst and then taking him in 
his arms, saying, "Of such as this is the kingdom 
of heaven." 

Now do we find it difficult to make out the 
meaning of these words ? Then that may mean 
that we never were children. There are some peo- 
ple of whom we say that they were born old. 
They are little old men and women from their verj^ 
cradles. That is not quite true, but the spirit of 



202 THE CHILDLIKE SPIRIT. 

childhood may be repressed and checked so early 
by a false idea of education and training, or more 
frequently by sheer selfishness and impatience, 
as to destroy all the freshness and spontaneity of 
childhood as soon as it makes its appearance. 
Children may be so drilled into the proprieties of 
life, they may be so schooled and drilled into arti- 
ficial conceptions and manners, that they cease to 
be children before their childhood fairly begins. 
They may be denied the society of other children, 
they maybe thrust out into the world to make 
their own way prematurely ; they may have to do 
the work of men and women while they are yet 
children. All this destroys the very spirit of 
childhood and perverts and dwarfs the child's 
nature, developing an abnormal creature that is 
neither child nor man, but has all the weakness of 
both. Such persons, of course, will find it hard to 
understand the meaning of Christ's words : " Be- 
come as little children." 

Then there is another class to whom this saying 
of Jesus, " Become as little children," must seem 
a hard saying, those, namely, who have forgotten 
that they ever were children. A poet mourns for 
those who not only lose their love, but lose at 
length the steadfast certainty that they ever did 
love. So there be many who have lost not only 
their chilhood, but the very memory of it. The 
period of childhood is not only past, but forgotten, 
so utterly forgotten that they can scarcely believe 



THE CHILDLIKE SPIRIT. 203 

that they ever were children. A great gulf of 
oblivion is fixed between their childhood and their 
manhood, so that there is no communication be- 
tween them. And when Jesus says that in order 
to enter his kingdom we must cross that gulf, we 
must go back to the spirit of childhood, must be- 
come as little children, he seems to such to speak 
words very hard to be understood. Let us hope, 
however, that all of us have enough of the mem- 
ory and the spirit of childhood left in us to under- 
stand the meaning of Christ's words, " Whosoever 
shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little 
child, he shall not enter therein." 

There is one characteristic of childhood that 
Jesus especially commends to his disciples, that of 
humility. " Whosoever shall humble himself as 
this little child, the same is greatest in the 
kingdom of heaven." What are we to understand 
by this humility, this humbling one's self? These 
disciples are to become as this little child. In 
what respect ? wherein do they differ from the 
child? Put the scene before your mind again. 
Christ is in the house at Capernaum. His disci- 
pies are sitting about him. The child is nestling 
in his arms. Then he utters the words : u Who- 
soever shall humble himself and become as this 
little child, the same shall be greatest in the king- 
dom of heaven. Whoever shall not receive the 
kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter 
therein." This child was closer to Christ than any 



204 THE CHILDLIKE SPIEIT. 

one of his disciples. Wherein was the difference ? 
It was not simply a difference of stature, that the 
disciples were fall grown men and this was only a 
child ; nor a difference in development of mind, 
that the minds of the disciples were mature and 
the child's was crude and untrained. The difference 
was a difference of spirit. The lowliness of the 
child's mind contrasted strongly with the lofty and 
vaulting spirit of the disciples. The disciples, 
even as they sat about Jesus, were not content with 
their places. Their minds were full of delusive 
hopes of power; dreams of thrones filled all their 
thoughts ; visions of their own exaltation above 
the multitude, and even above each other, swam 
before their eyes continually. And they were im- 
patient to have their visions come to pass ; they 
clamored and strove with one another for pre-emi- 
nence. Now the child's mind was empty of all 
these vain expectations. As it sat there in the 
midst of the disciples or lay quietly on the bosom 
of Christ, it had no longing for some more hon- 
ored place, no ambition to be raised above all the 
rest and have all eyes centered upon itself. It was 
content to be where Jesus placed it. Now Jesus 
says unless you humble yourself and become as 
this little child in this respect ; unless you cast 
down all these high imaginations of your own pro- 
motion and put away all your vain hopes of 
worldly honor, and have this child's lowliness of 
mind, so that you will be content wherever I place 



THE CHILDLIKE SPIRIT. 205 

yon, whether it be on a level with your brethren or 
beneath them, you can not enter the kingdom of 
heaven. 

But what makes this difference between the dis- 
ciples and the little one, between Peter and Peter's 
child ? Why is it that the mind of the father is 
full of vain ambition and that of the child is 
empty of all such dreams ? It is the pride of 
Peter which has filled his mind with these great 
expectations, and their absence from the mind of 
his child is due to the absence of pride. After all 
it is not the possession but the pride of power that 
makes the difference. 

Let us picture to our minds a king seated upon 
his glorious throne with his child beside him. 
About him the multitudes are gathered, all eager 
to behold the face of royalty. Now mark the dif- 
ference between the king and the child. The 
monarch's countenance is flushed with the sense 
of his greatness. He bears himself as one who is 
well conscious of his exalted place. The pride of 
his position he can not conceal. Nor does the 
king differ from his subjects who shout his praises, 
except in the possession of power. In pride of 
power they are all like himself; and each one 
would be just as haughty in his bearing if he were 
king. But no trace of pride appears in the face of 
the child. At first there is a wondering, half- 
frightened look, which presently gives place to an 
expression of innocence and peace, as he remem- 



206 THE CHILDLIKE SPIRIT. 

Ibers that he is "by his father's side. There is no 
more sign of pride in the face of this royal child 
than in that of that peasant's child down there, 
who, with equal confidence is holding the hand of 
his father. And the king's child could descend 
from the throne and take the hand of the peasant's 
child without any feeling of condescension. The 
thought of degrading itself Iby such company 
would never enter the child's mind if not sug- 
gested by others. But the king, his father, could 
he descend from his throne and take the peasant's 
hand without feeling that he was stooping very 
low in the act ? Herein we have the difference be- 
tween the humble spirit of childhood and the 
haughty spirit of the world. And this spirit of 
childhood, says Jesus, is the spirit of his true dis- 
ciples, " To become as a little child" is the indis- 
pensable requirement of all who would enter his 
kingdom. 

The spirit of childhood is the spirit of faith no 
less than the spirit of humility, indeed, because it 
is the spirit of humility. A humble mind is the 
great condition and preparation of faith, as a 
proud and haughty mind is the great cause of un- 
belief. How does the child's rnind show its 
humility. First, by its willingness to confess its 
ignorance. The endless questions which our chil- 
dren put to us are so many confessions of ignor- 
ance. The reason their parents don't ask more 
questions is not that they know so much, but they 



THE CHILDLIKE SPIEIT. 207 

are ashamed to confess that they don't know. It 
is our pride, and not our wisdom, which checks our 
questions. Then, children are generally willing to 
part with their errors when they learn the truth, 
and in that they differ also greatly from their par- 
ents. We hold on to our errors through sheer 
pride of consistency, because to give them up 
would be to own our fallibility ; and though we 
confess that in general, we shrink from any partic- 
ular demonstration of it. The docility of the child- 
mind is another proof of humility. The childlike 
mind not only confesses that it does not know, but 
that it wants to know. It is willing to be in- 
structed. Pride is the great hindrance to docility. 
In the first place it pre-occupies the mind with 
error. This was the trouble with the disciples. 
Their minds were so taken up with erroneous 
notions and idle delusions concerning Christ's 
kingdom that his teachings respecting the true 
nature of his kingdom could find no lodgment in 
them. All that he said about his sufferings and 
death and about the crosses they must bear if they 
would be his disciples, made no impression upon 
them. In the second place, pride stands at the 
door of the mind and forbids the entrance of truth 
for fear that it may find lodgment. It will have 
nothing to cross the threshold of the mind that 
does not fall in with the convictions which it cher- 
ishes already. Thus Peter's pride stood at the 
door of his mind when Jesus sought to instruct 



208 THE CHILDLIKE SPIRIT. 

him of his coming sufferings and death and for- 
bade this truth of his passion admittance. Peter 
refused to entertain any such thought, saying, " Be 
it far from thee, Lord," and " this shall never be." 
In the third place, pride seeks to destroy the 
teachable spirit by barring out truth from the 
mind by a false philosophy which would assure a 
man that he is sufficient for himself, and therefore 
does not need a revelation of God nor the exercise 
of faith. ~Now truth is as needful to man as the 
trellis is to the vine. And faith is as natural to 
the mind and as truly a part of it as the tendril 
that belongs to the vine and is a part of it. As 
the vine shorn of its tendrils ceases to that extent 
to be a vine, so a man in whom the capacity of 
faith has been destroyed, is so far not a man. He 
has been shorn of a part of his nature. It is the 
tendency of our pride to strike down the trellis of 
truth, to destroys the tendrils of faith, and so to 
make the soul creep in self-sufficiency instead of 
climbing up towards God. Now in childhood these 
tendrils of faith have not yet been clipped by the 
cruel shears of pride. So Jesus commends to us 
the faith of little children : " Whosoever shall 
not receive the kingdom of God as with the faith 
of a little child, he shall not enter therein." 

The childlike spirit is the spirit of obedience. 
I do not say unquestioning obedience, for, as has 
been said, children are full of questions. But they 
do not make the answer to those questions the con- 



THE CHILDLIKE SPIRIT. 209 

dition of their obedience. There may have been 
a questioning look in the eyes of this little 
child in the house at Capernaum, as if he would 
say, " What does the Master want with me, now 
that he is occupied with his disciples ?" But if so, 
he did not stay to have his question answered. 
It was enough that the Master had called him. He 
did not stop to question his right to call him. We 
are not to repress the spirit of inquiry in children, 
as if that spirit were wicked. Parents who do 
that sin against the right and nature of childhood. 
But we are to teach them that they are not to wait 
until these questions are answered before they 
obey, nor obey only so far as they can understand. 
They are to trust the wisdom of their superiors, 
and acknowledge their authority to command 
them without explaining the command. This is 
the disposition of children. And though the way- 
ward and insubordinate spirit shows itself very 
early, yet it does not belong to childhood. It is 
learned from the bad example of those who are 
older. Obedience comes naturally to the child until 
he has been corrupted by the insubordinate and 
ungovernable spirit of others, sometimes his asso- 
ciates, but often by those whose business it is to 
train him into habits of obedience and subordina- 
tion. 

This childlike spirit of obedience to Christ is 
essential to entrance into his kingdom. There are 
commandments written plain and bold at the door 

14 



210 THE CHILDLIKE SPIRIT. 

of Christ's kingdom. The command to believe, to 
repent, to confess his name, to be baptized. These 
are the yoke which every soul who enters the 
kingdom must take upon him. Nor must we wait 
to see the full meaning of them all. Our great 
question must be, " Lord, what wilt thou have me 
to do?" not " WJiy wilt thou have me to do it?" 
And whenever you have this spirit of implicit, 
unhesitating obedience, whatever else you may 
lack, whether it be age, or worthiness, or knowl- 
edge, or deep convictions of sin, or strong emo- 
tions, or confidence in our ability to hold out, you 
are not far from the kingdom of God. Nothing 
remains for you to do but rise and enter. To you 
may be fitly spoken the words of Ananias to Saul, 
" Why tarriest thou ? Arise and be baptized and 
wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the 
Lord," acknowledging in your baptism that Jesus' 
blood washes you from all your sins, and that 
henceforth he shall be the Lord and guide of your 
life. 



XIX. 
THE VALUE OF FOREIGN MISSIONS. 

Now there were at Antioch, in the church that was there, prophets and 
teachers, Barnabas, and Symeon that was called Niger, and Lucius of Cyrene, 
and Manaen the foster brother of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. And as they 
ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barna- 
bas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them. Then, when they 
had fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them, they sent them away.— 
Acts 13: 1-3. 

This Antioch in Syria was a city of great 
eminence and importance. It was beautiful for 
situation ; it was the seat of the empire of the 
Seleucidse, and maintained its political and mili- 
tary importance after their empire was overthrown 
by the Eomans. And it was a great commercial 
center, being the gateway between the East and 
the West, the meeting-place where the caravans 
from across the desert unloaded their wares in the 
ships from across the sea, and were laden by them 
in turn. For all this, the probability is that Anti- 
och would scarcely be known to history but for 
another movement which began there, and which 
at the time seemed to her and to all the world 
unworthy of notice ; namely, the movement for the 
evangelization of the world. Antioch was the 
birthplace of Foreign Missions. As the little city 
of Palos in Spain can never be forgotten, because 
from it set out that frail fleet which brought this 

(211) 



212 THE VALUE OF FOREIGN MISSIONS. 

new world to light, so the larger city of Antioch 
shall live in history because from it the first mis- 
sionaries to the heathen world set sail. 

This is a good text, then, in which to study the 
value of Foreign Missions. What are they worth 
to the church and the world, and in what, particu- 
larly does their value consist? 

I recognize at once that some, and some too whom 
we should not expect, are beginning to fear that 
foreign missions will receive a greater share of 
our attention and our contributions than is justly 
their due. They are, it is said, coming into a dis- 
proportionate importance, and occupying too much 
of the church's mind and heart. That would be a 
singular and, we might say, unnatural occurrence. 
Unnatural, because it is very unnatural for us to 
pay more regard to the more remote and conse- 
quently less importunate appeals to our benevo- 
lence than to those which are nearer and more 
urgent. The blind man within the camp or the 
city stands a better chance of getting his bread 
than the leper who has been banished to the 
desert, and whose case, however needy, and whose 
cries, however loud, are too far off to be heard. 
The heathen are as the lepers who are banished 
to the other side of the world, and it were a most 
unexpected and unreasonable thing, if we pay 
more heed to them than we do to the cases of need 
which cry in our streets and crowd at our doors. 






THE VALUE OF FOREIGN MISSIONS. 213 

It is indeed so unreasonable as to be, to me, 
incredible. 

The truth is that we are not lacking so much in 
charity to the poor and ignorant in our own land 
as we are injustice. The laborers of our country 
need their wages paid to them on the great prin- 
ciple of justice rather than necessity; they need 
also a reasonable protection from the drink evil ; 
they need finally the Gospel of Christ preached to 
them plainly and practically. All this is far more 
a matter of justice than of charity. The value of 
the poor to our country is worth all this. We owe 
it to them as an honest debt. If we pay them 
their dues they will need little of charity, and we 
may well send it abroad. And it is a sort of 
insult to give them charity while we deny them 
justice. 

Whatever our estimate of the need of Christian 
benevolence at home, a need certainly that I do not 
belittle, let not this blind us to the value and duty 
of sending the Gospel abroad. In order to esti- 
mate and to realize that value, let us try first to 
do that which is so hard for us to do — put our- 
selves in the place of those to whom the Gospel is 
sent, become heathen for a moment. We grow a 
little indignant and contemptuous, I know, at the 
very thought ; we consider ourselves so far above 
the heathen that the very suggestion of putting 
ourselves in their places, of becoming even in 
imagination such as they are, is regarded with a 



214 THE YALUE OF EOKEIGN MISSIONS. 

sort of disdain, as though we were a different and 
higher order of beings. But we are not so far off 
from the heathen as we think. It is only a little 
while since our savage Saxon ancestors preyed 
upon one another like beasts in their primeval for- 
ests. They had plenty of energy, but it was spent 
chiefly in killing each other. It is hard to find, if 
it be not impossible to find, in the wilds of Africa 
a tribe more savage and bloodthirsty than the men 
from whom we are descended. We have the land 
of Britain remaining, but the original British were 
simply slaughtered wholesale, and exterminated 
utterly by the hordes of Northmen who invaded 
the country. And from those bloody heathen 
Northmen we who, forsooth, cannot speak of the 
heathen but with terms of contempt, are directly 
descended. Why should it be so hard for us who 
a little while ago were butchering our fellowmen, 
and who show by this very contempt of the 
heathen the remains of that caste spirit which is 
the bane of heathenism, why should we scout the 
idea of putting ourselves for a moment in the 
heathen's place ? 

Try, then, to think of the value of the Gospel to 
the heathen. Follow Paul and Barnabas to Anti- 
och in Pisidia, observe how almost the whole city 
comes together to hear the word of God, see, as the 
Gentiles hear of God's love for them, how they are 
glad and glorify the word of God, and read how 
these disciples from among the heathen are filled 



THE VALUE OF EOEEIGN" MISSIONS. 215 

with joy and the Holy Spirit ; or go on with them 
into the ruder districts of Lystra and Derbe and 
observe how those crude and brutish people are 
turned from idols to serve the living God, and with 
what grateful fidelity they rally about the perse- 
cuted missionaries and welcome them to their 
humble homes. And if you follow the modern 
missionary in his labors you will see from many 
such things that heathen missions are of unspeak- 
able value and preciousness to the heathen them- 
selves. If, then, we value those things which 
enable us to bring joy and blessing to others, we 
should set a high estimate on foreign missions. 

But further than this foreign missions have been 
the means of giving to the church souls as grand 
and heroic as the world ever saw. The ministry of 
Saul and Barnabas is not only a blessing to the 
heathen, but it is, if possible, still more a blessing 
to themselves. They are made mightier and worth- 
ier men by their mission. There is something 
ennobling and exalting in this work, so that the 
man who engages in it heartily and unselfishly 
begins to tower above the common lot of men in 
Titanic grandeur and strength. 

"When these two men came back from their first 
missionary tour to report to the church from which 
they had gone out, we know that there were marks 
of the hardships and sufferings of that ministry 
upon them. There were the scars and bruises left 
from their cruel stoning at Lystra. They bore wit- 



216 THE VALUE OF FOREIGN MISSIONS. 

ness on their bodies of the perils of their ministry* 
But as they stood up in that assembly to recount 
their labors and successes, were there no marks of 
a larger growth upon them also ? were there not 
traces of a faith, a heroism, a zeal for Christ and 
for men, a moral and spiritual grandeur, which 
they had not attained to when they set sail from 
Antioch, and which without this ministry among 
the heathen they never could have attained? 
When a few months later these two missionaries 
went up to Jerusalem and rehearsed what signs 
and wonders God had wrought among the Gentiles 
by them, the heroic bearing and spirit of these 
men deeply impressed the whole assembly, and 
they were greeted as "men that had hazarded 
their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." 
From that time on missions among the heathen 
have developed the grandest heroes of the world's 
history. Not such heroes indeed as the world has 
been willing to recognize or acknowledge. Alas I - 
for this world's ideal of heroism ! Unless men are 
mighty to destroy their fellow-men, unless they 
ride out in the world's view in a chariot whose 
wheels are stained in blood, unless they make 
their way through carnage and leave desolation 
and bitterness in their train, the foolish world re- 
fuses to call them great. The world's true heroes 
are at length coming to be known. The time is 
coming, aye, is not far off, when the names of 
Carey, Judson, Moffat and Livingtone, will be the 



THE VALUE OF FOEEIGIST MISSIONS. 217 

brightest names in the annals of this nineteenth 
century, and when the words of Theodore Parker, 
certainly not prejudiced in favor of missions, will 
be the verdict of our whole land : "If modern 
missionary enterprise had done no more than pro- 
duce one Adoniram Judson it were worth all it 
cost." But it has produced hundreds like him, 
heroic in spirit and unfaltering in faith. 

The greatest present value of Foreign Missions 
to the church I conceive to be this : that they are 
proving our subjection to the spirit and the Word 
of God ; they make the most direct and the heart- 
iest draught on our faith of all the various enter- 
prises to which the church is called. We all know 
that the stock objection to foreign missions from 
the day they were started until now is this : their 
unreasonableness. They were said to be unreas- 
onable because the hope of converting the heathen 
is a forlorn and. foolish hope ; because there are 
enough heathen at home to engage all the energies 
of the church ; because the cost of conducting this 
work is immense ; and because if the heathen are 
to have the gospel God will see that they get it in 
his own good time and way. It must be admitted 
that history weakened this argument greatly at all 
points, and yet it is so far conclusive, that there is 
but one complete answer to it, and that is the an- 
swer given by the Duke of Wellington to a young 
curate who was urging this argument against for- 
eign missions, with great force. " Young man,' 5 



218 THE VALUE OF FOKEIGJN" MISSIONS. 

said the Duke, " what are your marching orders ?" 
The curate saw the point. " Go teach all nations," 
was his reply. " Then obey them," said the Iron 
Duke, " and ask no reasons why." The great 
cause of missions did not originate with man. Of 
all the great teachers who have taken upon them 
the office of enlightening men, not one ever laid 
on his disciples the duty of taking their teachings 
to all the world. They would have accounted 
this a preposterous task. Only that great Teacher 
sent from God commanded his apostles to make 
disciples of all nations. So this movement to evan- 
gelize the nations which sets out from Antioch, 
originates not with the church nor any one of its 
teachers. "Then the Spirit said, Separate me Bar- 
nabas and Saul to the work whereunto I have 
called them." The obligation to send the gospel 
abroad rests on the great commission of Christ and 
the special inspiration of his Spirit. They were 
established not in the wisdom of man, but in the 
power of God. And the cause of foreign missions 
is come now to test the faith of the church, to see 
whether we will obey this commission and be sub- 
ject to this word of the Spirit for no other reason 
than this — the word of the Lord hath said it ; 
whether we are willing to walk wholly by faith, 
or whether we will refuse to walk ever after the 
lead of Christ, unless reason and judgment go 
along to keep our faith company. 

The test is a critical one indeed ; but the church 



THE VALUE OF FOEEIGN MISSIONS. 219 

which shrank from it at first is proving herself 
more and more willing to obey the marching 
orders of her Head and her Captain, whether they 
run wise in her own eyes or otherwise. And so this 
cause is revealing to the world that the church's 
profession to walk by faith is not altogether a false 
and empty profession, that our professed subjec- 
tion to the will of Christ is a real and practical 
subjection ; that the place of reason in the church 
is simply to determine, first what the Lord com- 
mands, but never why he commands it. 

The point of my appeal to-day is not so much 
for a large collection for foreign missions, or for 
the consent of your reason that they are a wise 
and worthy object of your benevolence. I appeal 
rather for more positive and practical interest in 
this cause. I appeal first for a more general in- 
terest. The number of Christians actually awak- 
ened and interested in this work is mournfully 
small. It is estimated that not more than one 
fourth of the church bear any active part in sus- 
taining our missions abroad. This is not only 
privation to the missions, but it means the chastise- 
ment of the church. Just so surely as we confine 
our sympathies, our affections, our money to our- 
selves, our homes and our own little world, the 
hand of Grod will come among us and strike down 
these objects of our exclusive affection ; or he will 
refuse to prosper and bless us and cause all our 
cherished hopes to end in bitter disappointment ; 



220 THE VALUE OF FOKEIGN MISSIONS. 

or he will send leanness and barrenness upon our 
souls. 

If we are deaf to the cries of the heathen he may 
presently silence the songs on our own lips and 
banish from our lives the sound of laughter and 
the voice of merriment, and we may be compelled 
to cry for mercy for ourselves. Therefore let 
the whole church heed the last great command of 
its Master, " Go !" 

And let us have a permanent interest in this 
work of the Lord ; no more spurts of zeal and fits 
of liberality, and momentary glimpses of the gran- 
deur of the foreign work,, but a steady, resolute, 
prayerful remembrance of this great object for 
which God sent his Son into the world and for 
which he keeps his church in the world, that there 
may at last be gathered about the throne of God 
a great multitude which no man can number, of all 
nations and kindreds and peoples and tongues, 
clothed with white robes, and having palms in 
their hands, and crying in a loud voice, saying, 
" Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the 
throne, and unto the Lamb." 



XX. 

DELIGHT IN THE LORD. 

Delight thyself also in the Lord; and he shall give thee the desires of thine 
heart.— Psalms 37 ; 4. 

We all know how certain sounds or objects are 
stamped instantly and indelibly npon the memory 
so that no flood of passing years can wash them 
out. We hear certain words or phrases and they 
ring in our ears and run in our heads, as we are 
wont to say, to the end of life. Sometimes a sweet 
strain of music or snatches of an old song or a line 
of poetry will haunt the memory continually, and 
we find ourselves singing it or saying it to our- 
selves all through the hours of the day. So a 
pleasant face seen for but an instant long ago may 
be vividly remembered through all the years and 
would be immediately recognized if it again 
appeared to us. Other faces, thousands of them, 
which we have seen since have passed from the 
memory like a dream, but this remains like a 
thing of life. So a bit of landscape which broke 
upon us in a moment while we sat by the window 
of a rail-car, and as we turned some sharp curve 
or climbed some mountain-side, may seem to be 
floating before our eyes at this moment and will 
remain with us as long as memory lasts. 

(221) 



222 DELIGHT IN THE LORD. 

Now I should render you a valuable service if I 
did nothing else in this discourse than fix these 
words of the text fast in your memories so that 
you might recall them at will and meditate on 
them at your leisure. "Delight thyself also in the 
Lord, and he shall give thee the desires of thine 
heart." And if I might make you see the deep 
yet simple meaning of these words and persuade 
you to shape your life thereto, I should have 
preached a sermon worth going a thousand miles 
to deliver, which I fear is a good deal more than 
most sermons are worth. 

I. Let us observe then, in the first place, that 
the Lord requires of his servants and his saints 
that they shall delight themselves in him. We 
are not only not to fret ourselves because of evil 
doers, but we are to trust in the Lord and do good. 
And not only are we to trust in the Lord, but to 
delight ourselves in him also, and then he shall 
give us the desires of our hearts. Now this duty 
of delight in God implies several things. 

1. It implies, in the first place, that God is of 
such a character that he can be delighted in. 
That means that he must be a good and a gracious 
God. We can take a certain pleasure in the con- 
templation of greatness. Every one feels a kind 
of elevation when he beholds for the first time 
some object of great majesty and magnitude. The 
mountains and the sea, because of their vastness, 
inspire our minds with a sense of admiration and 



DELIGHT IN THE LORD. 223 

awe. The great cataract yonder draws visitors 
from the different places of the earth because of 
its immense magnitude. How does Niagara differ 
from the tiniest rivulet that trickles over a ledge 
of stone in some quiet forest but in this, that it is 
a million times larger. Its great size makes its 
majesty. And this also makes the difference 
between an humble hillock and a towering moun- 
tain, between a miniature lake and the multitudi- 
nous sea. The pleasure which we take in these 
things is the pleasure which comes of the contem- 
plation of mere magnitude. And so far as they 
declare to us the greatness of God we may take 
pleasure in that. 

But we cannot forget that our admiration for 
greatness is always moderated and often utterly 
repressed by the consideration that this greatness 
is only a greatness which destroys and not which 
saves. That mother whose child leaped from the 
arms of its uncle into the cataract's swift current 
can never think of the greatness of Niagara again 
without a sigh of distress. To her its mighty 
power is only a power to destroy. So if the end of 
the mountains was to execute the vengeance of the 
Almighty, to fall on the race of man and cover it 
forever from the wrath of God, the magnitude of 
the mountains would not attract but appall our 
hearts. The ancients, who had not learned the art 
of navigation, and whose timid craft hugged the 
shore and dared not venture out of sight of land, 



224 DELIGHT IN THE LORD. 

did not admire the sea. They feared it and hated 
it as some terrible monster whose delight was to 
swallow up the children of men. If we knew noth- 
ing of God except his greatness, we might find 
some pleasure in contemplating that, but we 
should take no delight in him. Rather, we should 
be dismayed by terrible anticipations of his de- 
stroying power. And the more we realized the 
greatness and majesty of God the greater would 
be our concern and alarm. That is why nature 
can never give us a sufficient revelation of God, 
why natural religion never can be a joyful religion. 
It declares God's greatness, but it does not clearly 
declare the character of that greatness, whether it 
shall be exercised to destroy men, or whether it is 
to be employed to save them. When David tells 
us to delight ourselves in God, we may be sure 
that he caught some clearer and more comforting 
vision of him than appears in this visible creation. 
We find pleasure also in the contemplation of 
beauty. The starry heavens, the blue sky, the 
green earth purpled with myriads of flowers and 
flecked with fair forests excites our admiration and 
stirs our emotions. And if we connect these 
things with the Creator, and think of them as 
having had their origin in the mind of God, then 
the beauty of the Lord may impress us deeply. 
How beautiful, we may say, is the mind of God, if 
this is its symbol and expression ! But this admi- 
ration may be checked and these emotions may be 



DELIGHT IN THE LORD. 225 

chilled by the reflection that beauty is not mercy. 
There is no message of sympathy or compassion 
in a beautiful object. The aurora borealis is beau- 
tiful, but you grow cold as you look at it. Appre- 
ciation of beauty is not always associated with 
feelings of humanity and kindness. We have a 
striking illustration of this in an incident in the 
French Revolution. In the attack on the Tuil- 
leries, after the king had been arrested and the 
blood of many innocent victims had been shed, 
some of the king's friends and courtiers climbed 
the statuary adorning the palace grounds in hope 
of escaping the avengers. The Revolutionists 
would not shoot them as they clung to those beau- 
tiful statues for fear of injuring and defacing the 
statuary. They first thrust and pierced them with 
their bayonets until they came down and then 
slaughtered the poor wretches in cold blood. 
Their love of beauty moved them to spare the 
statuary while they had no mercy on mankind. 
This is no exceptional and monstrous instance. 
Love of beauty and love of mercy have no neces- 
sary connection. If nature shows us a God who 
delights in beauty, it by no means follows from 
that that he delights in mercy. 

But it is because God is revealed to us in Scrip- 
ture as merciful and gracious, slow to anger, long- 
suffering, and plenteous in mercy, pitying them 
that fear him as a Father pities his children, tak- 
ing no pleasure in the death of the wicked, not 

15 



226 DELIGHT IN THE LORD. 

willing that any should perish, but willing that all 
men should be saved, so loving the world as to 
send his Son to die for it, that whosoever believeth 
on him should not perish but have everlasting life, 
that we can delight in him. It was the special 
mission of Jesus to reveal God as a loving Father. 
His own life was such a revelation. Jesus was a 
loving and most lovable man, a great heart going 
about doing good. And himself declares that he 
is the manifestation of God's disposition to men, 
so that he says to Philip, when he asked him, 
" Show us the Father," "Have I been so long time 
with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip ? 
he that hath seen me hath seen the Father." In 
such a God as Jesus Christ reveals, surely the soul 
of man can take delight. 

2. But we must observe also that the duty to 
delight in God implies not only that God must be 
of such a character that we can delight in him, but 
we also must be of such a character that we can 
delight in him. Christ taught clearly the father- 
hood of God but, as has been well said, he did not 
teach the grandmotherhood of God, which is just 
what some people mean by his fatherhood. His 
love is not a mere sentiment of pity for human 
infirmity and iniquity. It is not what some one 
calls a " mush of magnanimity." It is a holy love, 
which can not make light of sin, which loves right- 
eousness and hates iniquity. God loves sinners, it 
is true. But he does not love them because they 



DELIGHT IN THE LORD. 227 

are sinners, but because they are something else 
beside sinners ; because there is a germ of good in 
every man, and God loves him for that, and his love 
lays hold on that and seeks to separate it from sin 
and train it into likeness with himself. If any 
man were totally depraved, wicked through and 
through, with no seed of righteousness remaining 
in him, he would be totally lost to the love of God. 
It is because there is some trace of God's image 
still left in every man, however faint it may be in 
some, that the message of God's love is proclaimed 
for all. 

But in order to delight in this love of God we 
must first trust it and then obey the commands 
which that love lays upon us. We can not delight 
in the Lord while we yet delight in sin. For that 
would be to delight in our own destruction. The 
very task which the love of God has set itself is to 
destroy sin from the face of the universe. And in 
doing this that love must destroy the sinner also 
unless he will separate himself from sin. So long 
as he is joined to that idol he must perish with 
it. And no man can delight in his own perdition. 
To delight in the Lord he must renounce his sin 
and leave it to be consumed of the wrath of God. 

Is not this the reason that so many of the pro- 
fessed servants of the Lord do not find delight in 
his service ? They are conscious of clinging to cer- 
tain sins, holding to them as Israel held to fcheir 
idols, hiding them in their tents, building secret 



228 DELIGHT IN THE LORD. 

altars for their worship, even after they had sworn 
to renounce idolatry and worship Jehovah alone. 
So long as they did this they could have no delight 
in his service, knowing his judgment against idol- 
atry. So if we would find delight in the Lord we 
must fully forswear our sins and serve the Lord 
with our whole heart and soul. If this be our 
character, if submission and surrender to the love 
of God is complete, then will we rejoice in him; 
his will must be our choice, his word our law, his 
service our delight. 

II. Turn now to the second part of this text. If 
we delight in the Lord he will give us the desires 
of our hearts. Because then our desires will be 
such as may be granted without injury either to 
ourselves or our fellows. We shall then desire 
only such things as may be granted consistently 
with the will of God and the welfare of mankind. 
Let us suppose the case of a subject who is singly 
devoted to the will and welfare of his sovereign, 
that he has no wish that does not look to that 
sovereign's interest and honor. Might it not be 
said of a servant who so delighted in his master 
that because of that delight he should have the 
desires of his heart ? Since he cherished no desire 
that was alien to his master's good, all his desires 
might be granted with impunity. Such a subject 
the great Cyrus is said to have had,'; to whom he 
was so devoted and in whose loyalty to himself he 
had such confidence, that he declared no desire of 



DELIGHT IN THE L0ED. 229 

that servant should be denied, and that if he 
lacked means to grant his petitions he would melt 
down his golden throne and coin it into gifts to 
gratify such a faithful friend. When we are as 
loyal and as faithful to Jesus Christ as this man 
was to his master, then will our heart's desire and 
prayer be heard. 

It is recorded of John Chrysostom, the great 
Christian preacher and orator of the fourth cen- 
tury, that when some of his contemporaries de- 
sired him to give them some simple rules for a 
holy life, he summed them all up in this one : 
" Love Christ and do as you please." He lived in 
days when men were letting go Christ and laying 
hold on rites and rules for salvation and cumbering 
the Christian life with intolerable burdens. His wise 
counsel was : " Discard rules and be elevated to 
Christ." Is it not the counsel of David in another 
form, " Delight thyself in the Lord and he will 
give thee the desires of thine heart?" Ministers 
are sometimes brought by their young people es- 
pecially, to lay down certain rules of conduct in 
respect to certain popular amusements. Is there 
any wiser answer for them than that of the faithful 
fourth century preacher, " Love Christ and do as 
you please ?" or that of the psalmist, " Delight 
thyself in the Lord and he will give thee the de- 
sires of thine heart ?" Only be sure that your de- 
light is not in your own pleasure, not in the in- 
dulgence of your own tastes and appetites, but in 



230 DELIGHT IN THE LOED. 

the law of the Lord, that the love of Christ con- 
strains you and the honor of his cause is your 
deepest desire, and you shall not go astray. 

If there ever lived a man who delighted in the 
Lord, that man was Paul. All of Paul's desires 
were centered in the name of his Master. One of 
the deepest of these desires was to preach the gos- 
pel at Rome, that great center of power and learn- 
ing. For a time that desire of Paul's heart 
seemed doomed to disappointment. Instead of 
going to Rome he went to prison ; instead of strik- 
ing the shackles of ignorance and idolatry from 
the benighted city he was himself bound with 
chains of iron. For all this, this desire to see 
Rome was granted, and granted in such a way 
that he afterwards confesses that his going to 
Rome as a prisoner had turned out more to the 
furtherance of the gospel than if he had been suf- 
fered to enter the city as a free man. 

So, my friends, of the deep desires of your heart. 
If they are inspired by your delight in the Lord, in 
God's time and in God's way they shall be satis- 
fied. Some of us desire our own growth in grace, 
in knowledge and in holiness ; some of us desire 
the conversion of our friends, or, if they are pro- 
fessing Christians, we desire them to be more 
active and joyful in His service ; some of us desire 
the peace, the unity, the prosperity of the church, 
and the union of the present divided household of 
Christendom ; some of us desire the extension of 



DELIGHT IN THE LORD. 231 

the gospel over the earth and the coming of that 
day of salvation when the kingdoms of this world 
shall become the kingdom of our Lord and his 
Christ, that he may reign forever. Be of good 
cheer and faint not. " Delight thyself in the Lord 
also ; and he will give thee the desires of thine 
heart." 



XXI. 



THE REFLEXIVE RESULTS OF FOREIGN 
MISSIONS. 

God is able to make all grace abound unto you, that you, having all suffi- 
ciency in everything, may abound unto every good work.— 2 Cor. 9: 8. 

The teaching of these words is that besides the 
direct effect of obedience to Christ's will, which is 
the honor of our Master and the benefit of our 
kind, there is an indirect and reflexive result on 
the obedient which strengthens their character and 
increases their willingness and power to obey. 
" God is able to make all grace abound unto you, 
that you, having all sufficiency in everything, may 
abound unto every good work." These words may 
furnish me a theme whose simplicity I will not 
disguise by any novelty either in statement or ar- 
gument. I propose to rehearse before you once 
more some of the advantages which accrue to the 
Church from the faithful prosecution of the great 
cause of foreign missions. The subject is already 
old, but even yet so far from exhausted that I can 
only hope to coast along its headlands, touching 
at some of the most prominent and important 
points, from which we may get a distant and im- 
perfect survey of a work of which, if every sen- 
tence of this address could be expanded into a 

(232) 



REFLEXIVE EESULTS OF FOEEIGN MISSIONS. 233 

volume, we might still say the half has never been 
told: for we are just coming to see the immense 
importance of the work of foreign missions. Those 
who have seen Mont Blanc tell us that you do not 
appreciate its magnitude when you stand under 
its shadow in the vale of Chamouni. It is only 
when you have retreated to the shores of Lake 
Geneva, fifty miles away, that the great height 
towers up and spreads out before you in its vast 
proportions, and lies there in the celestial spaces 
like a world in itself. The foreign mission work 
is yet young. It is only a little while ago that its 
foundations were laid, or rather, discovered, after 
being so long overlaid, and the work of building 
Christ's universal kingdom renewed. "We are only 
now beginning to see how vast and high a work it 
is, how vital to the existence of the Church and to 
the interest of the whole race. 

Especially is this true of the reflexive result of 
foreign missions. The men who, less than a hun- 
dred years ago, took their lives in their hands and 
went to preach Christ to the heathen, did not think 
much of the effect of their mission on those whom 
they left behind them. They had respect for the 
heathen's miserable condition. 

They saw them as the apostles saw them, lying 
out in wickedness, having no hope, and without 
God in the world ; they beheld the nations of men 
as our Lord saw the multitudes, faint and scat- 
tered, and as sheep having no shepherd, and, like 



234 EEFLEXIVE KESULTS OF FOREIGN MISSIONS. 

the Lord, they were moved with compassion at the 
sight. More than everything else they regarded 
the great command and commission of Christ to 
evangelize the world. 

They were constrained by the authority and the 
love of Christ. 

Every man of them had come to regard his will 
as supreme above all things, and could say, in the 
words of the great Moravian leader, Zinzendorf : 
" I have but one passion. It is He — He alone." 

But they did not dream that the most immediate, 
and certainly not the least salutary result of their 
work would be the quickening, the deepening and 
the widening of the sluggish current of the 
Church's life. This they have done, and the work 
is beyond estimate. 

If they had done nothing to magnify Christ's 
name among the heathen, if they had never turned 
one soul from idols to serve the living God, if they 
had brought no strength and solace to themselves, 
if the good they had done were measured only by 
what has been wrought in the hearts and lives of 
those from whom they went out, still they had not 
lived and suffered their heroic lives in vain. The 
reflexive results of foreign missions are of surpass- 
ing interest and priceless value. 

1. Foreign missions have done invaluable ser- 
vice to the Church in restoring to its proper and 
original place the authority of its Head and Lord. 
The nerve of missions is the spirit of implicit obe- 



REFLEXIVE EESULTS OF FOKEIGN MISSIONS. 235 

dience. The eye of the risen Lord as he stands on 
the mountain and beholds the growing and ripen- 
ing fields beneath him glances away to the wide, 
white fields of humanity, and he leaves with his 
disciples the great commission to go into all the 
world and preach the gospel to every creature. 
The commandment is so exceedingly broad that it 
took Simon Peter, whose mind was perhaps of 
larger mold than any of the others, about ten years 
to get up to that height from which he could see 
its meaning, if, indeed, he had not to the last a 
more or less clouded vision of the great truth that 
" God is no respecter of persons, but in every 
nation he that feareth God and worketh righteous- 
ness is accepted of him." If, then, they perceived 
the extent of their commission so slowly, still less 
did they see any underlying reason for it except 
the will of Him to whom "all authority is given 
in heaven and in earth." They were not drawn 
out from the world by their interest in the heathen, 
but driven out by the word of the Lord. Yet so 
mighty was that constraint that Paul could say 
before his departure, The gospel has gone into the 
whole habitable world. 

But the rationalizing influence presently per- 
vaded the Church, chilled the spirit of obedience, 
and checked the progress of the gospel. 

The rationalizing tendency is indeed not pecu- 
liar to any age or sect, but inheres in our human 
nature, and therefore has its place and mission. 



236 REFLEXIVE RESULTS OF FOREIGN MISSIONS. 

Bat that mission is not to reduce the gospel to a 
system of philosophy and conform the commands 
of Christ to the canons of human reason. To such 
a task the leaders of the Church set themselves, 
and even flattered themselves that they had per- 
formed it. 

Christianity was reduced to a series of proposi- 
tions. God, its Author, was duly differentiated 
into trinity, and subdivided into attributes. Christ, 
its head and life, was made to sit again as a child 
at the feet of the doctors. The offense of the cross 
was done away in a philosophy of the atonement. 
And so for all the rest. The builders of a system- 
atic and rational theology had indeed raised for 
themselves " a monument more lasting than brass 
and higher than the regal structure of the pyra- 
mids ;" but like the tower of Babel, it was a monu- 
ment reared out of the ruins of faith. 

The very life of the gospel was ground out be- 
tween the upper and nether millstone of major and 
minor premise. Jewish rulers, who resisted the 
words of Stephen, supposed that they had God 
confined in their little temple, and laid violent 
hands on him who with his hammer of God's word 
dared to beat down its venerable doors and walls 
and let Jehovah escape among the Gentiles. So 
the rulers in spiritual Israel thought to shut up 
God in a syllogism, and showered, not stones, in- 
deed, but sneers and insults on those who per- 
ceived and proclaimed a wideness in God's love 



REFLEXIVE RESULTS OF FOREIGN" MISSIONS. 237 

not dreamed of in their philosophy. But God, 
who dwelleth not in a form of stones or in a form 
of words, brings the wisdom of men to naught and 
publishes his love abroad. 

And what authority there was remaining to the 
Church was divided between Christ himself and 
the leaders of Christian thought. Always the num- 
ber of those who accept a system intelligently is 
small with those who adhere to it, because it 
comes to them commended and endorsed by great 
and worthy names. The right of private judgment 
requires more labor and courage for its exercise 
than most men are willing to give. The judgment 
of one receives the consent of the many ; and so 
that one, often against his own will and protest, is 
invested with an authority which belongs to Christ 
alone. The doctrines of the gospel are then sus- 
tained, not by an appeal to Christ and the apos- 
tles, but by citations from creeds and fathers. 

Now when, after being so long cast out and by 
such means, the spirit of missions returned to the 
Church, the missionaries did not make their ap- 
peal to the reason of the age ; they did not seek for 
their enterprise any basis in philosophy ; they did 
not ask the consent of Luther or Calvin to go to 
the heathen. They plead only the authority of the 
Lord. They heard only Christ's charge to his 
Church to disciple his nations. " Step by step, 
with many voices crying right and left," they 
climbed their way back to the great commission, 



and heard once more the voice of the Lord bidding- 
them out into all the world. And into all the 
world they went, hearing such epithets flung after 
them (from the lips of Christ's ministers they 
came) as u consecrated cobblers" and "pious 
madmen." But they went on rejoicing, like their 
brethren, the apostles, that they were counted 
worthy to suffer shame and dishonor for the name 
of Christ. 

And what hath God wrought by those humble 
and faithful men ? Among many other blessings, 
they have brought into the hearts of disciples a 
profounder regard for the authority of the Lord ; 
they have taught us to be good soldiers of Jesus 
Christ, and to have the soldier's obedience. 

" Theirs not to make reply, 
Theirs not to reason why — 
Theirs but to do and die, " 

if only they may obey the great Captain's orders. 
Their work has brought out such an assertion of 
Christ's authority as Christians are bound to 
respect. Ever since old John Erskine startled his 
assembly of Scotch divines as they were about to 
vote the missionary enterprise " impracticable and 
visionary," by "ratching" his Bible and thunder- 
ing into their unbelieving ears the great gospel of 
Go ! the Church has been steadily learning a 
stricter subjection and obedience to Christ. 

And yet it is not a slavish obedience which the 
work of missions promotes, — a sullen submission 



REFLEXIVE RESULTS OF FOREIGN MISSIONS. 239 

to inexorable will. It is the constraint of a great 
affection ; it is a grateful consent to the sover- 
eignty of the Crucified. Authority is suffused with 
mercy, and fortified in a heart of love. Christ is 
the head of the Church because he loved it and 
gave himself for it. 

This appeal to the authority of Christ ought to 
have weight in this gathering. You have used it 
with effect on one injunction of the commission. 
This commission enjoins you to baptize those who 
believe in the gospel. And baptism, you say, is 
an act plainly described in the New Testament. 

If any one refuse that baptism, you can not con- 
sort with him. He may plead his good inten- 
tions, his good conscience, his good character ; but 
you will not consent, even for conscience or char- 
acter's sake, to set aside the authority of Christ. 
"You must go down into the water, brother." 
"Well, turn that same reasoning on the other end of 
the commission and go into all the world, if not for 
reason's sake and for concience's sake, then cer- 
tainly for Christ's sake. Else, for consistency's 
sake, let your baptism logic go to the winds and 
dry up the Jordan of your argument. 

2. Another result which has come to the Church 
from its foreign missions is a renewal of its energy 
and an increase of its activity. Christians begin 
once more to abound in the work of the Lord. 

The spectacle of Christianity, in the last half of 
the eighteenth century especially, was so forlorn 



240 REFLEXIVE RESULTS OF FOREIGN MISSIONS. 

and humiliating that infidelity was more open and 
defiant than it can ever dare to be again. Hume 
predicted the speedy decay of Christianity, and 
imagined that he already saw the signs of its 
approaching dissolution. Voltaire, with charac : 
teristic self-conceit, declared that the Christian 
faith which had been established by twelve men 
should now be overturned by one. Tom Paine, on 
his completion of his "Age of Reason," boasted 
that he had cut down every tree in Paradise. The 
fears and faults of believers gave point and plausi- 
bility to these vaunting words when a more aggres- 
sive faith might have laughed them all to scorn. 
The Church of that time had hardly faith enough 
left to keep it alive, and could poorly repel the 
assaults of its enemies. 

Those were dark days in England when the great 
Blackstone, after hearing every noted preacher in 
London, had to confess he got no gospel from any. 
The clergy of the Establishment were stricken with 
the blight of deism, while in many of the chapel 
pulpits St. John of the Gospels and epistles had 
been supplanted by the St. John of the institutes. 
And far worse than any infidelity or heresy was 
the indifference and inertia into which the Church 
was sunk. This is heresy in the heart, canker in 
the blood, dry rot in the soul. Luther supposed 
in his day that the work of the Church was done, 
and exclaims impatiently as the signs of the 
renaissance began to spring up about him : " The 



EEFLEXIVE KESULTS OF FOREIGN MISSIONS. 241 

arts are growing as if there was to be a new start 
and the world was to become young again. I hope 
God will finish it. We have already come to the 
white horse. Daniel's four empires, Babylonia, 
Persia, Greece, Rome, are gone. Another hundred 
years and all will be over. God's word will dis- 
appear for want of any to preach it. Mankind 
will turn into epicureans and care for nothing. 
They will not believe that God exists. Then his 
voice will be heard: 'Behold, the bridegroom 
cometh.' " But the bridegroom did not come, and 
in another two hundred years the bride has ceased 
to expect him or prepare the earth for his pres- 
ence ; there lay the old ship of Zion (if you can 
suffer this venerable figure once more) stranded 
amid skepticism, sectarianism and indifference, 
many fearing she had come to the end of her voy- 
age. Then broke in upon her the tide of mission- 
ary enthusiasm, bore her back to her appointed 
course, and set her on her way once more in her 
cruise of the world. 

It would be unfair and untrue to ascribe the 
revival of the Church's energy to the work of mis- 
sions alone. The latter end of the last century 
was fruitful of great ideas and great enterprises. 

The Sunday-school movement, in which the his- 
torian Green finds the beginnings of popular edu- 
cation in England, took its rise in this period. 
And other kindred movements led by kindred 

16 



242 EEFLEXIVE EESULTS OF FOREIGN MISSIONS. 

spirits sprang up in those most prolific years of 
English history. 

But evangelism is the life and support of all 
Christian work. 

As Alexander Duff has said, " The church which 
ceases to be evangelistic soon ceases to be evan- 
gelical." And the church which ceases to be 
evangelical must soon cease to be anything. For 
there is no sufficient motive outside of the gospel 
of Christ to incite to any serious and sustained 
effort in the world's behalf. If there is, what is 
it? Name it who can. Our commission reads to 
all the world, and Gfod will not bless us in a par- 
tial execution of it. The Church must stretch out 
her hands to the earth, or else they shall fall 
nerveless and helpless at her side, prospered in 
nothing. 

They struggle vainly to maintain a part of the 
commission who have not the courage to contend 
for all. So much the Church is learning under the 
lead of her missionaries. 

3. Foreign missions have exalted the word and 
advanced the work of the Lord. Then, also, they 
have enriched the history of the Church with the 
most magnificent examples of heroic character. 

Grander men than her missionaries have never 
crossed the stage of human history. Had there 
been no Philip there would have been no Demos- 
thenes, runs our proverb. 

So it is always. Luther no more made the 



REFLEXIVE RESULTS OF FOREIGN MISSIONS. 243 

Reformation than the Reformation made Lnther. 
Had there been no pope there would have been no 
Protestant. The heroes of the mission field, who 
are destined to stand on a level with Luther, if 
indeed they do not rise above him, became what 
they were through what they did. Without their 
work they would be as mute and inglorious as 
common men. 

Take the great character of Paul. He was the 
first missionary to the heathen, and his example 
not only inflamed the zeal of the first disciples, 
but it flashes like lightning through the centuries, 
and ever and anon kindles fresh fires of enthu- 
siasm in the bosom of the Church. What made 
Paul ? He was a genius to begin with, the only 
man yet born who could lead that mighty revolu- 
tion whereby the nations of the world were to be 
turned from idols to serve the living God. 

Then he was trained for his mission in the 
school of Providence. 

He was likewise called to it in an extraordinary 
manner, arrested and bound to it, as one might 
say, by an indissoluble and eternal tenure. He 
was beside all inspired for it, that is, lifted above 
the limitations of this earthen body and this 
earthen world to a height from which he saw 
men's relations to God and to one another with 
something of that clearness and wideness of vision 
with which God himself beholds them. But for 
all this, that Paul who first preached Christ in 



244 REFLEXIVE RESULTS OF FOREIGN MISSIONS. 

the synagogues of Damascus, was an infant beside 
the titanic soul who, some thirty years later, stood 
on one of the seven hills of Rome, looking "back 
over a finished life and forward to a fadeless 
crown. The great deeds of Paul were done among 
the Gentiles, the great words of Paul were called 
forth in his abounding zeal and labors on behalf 
of the heathen. The discourse on Mars Hill could 
never have been uttered had Paul's ministry been 
confined to his own nation. 

The epistle to the Romans is a direct product of 
the missionary spirit, a profound argument, an 
impassioned plea for the free offer of mercy to the 
world. This points to missions as its source. 

Pause, and I will show you a system a thous- 
andfold grander. 

Far out on the ocean, sleeping placidly on the 
bosom of its mother wave, is the unconscious 
waterdrop. For it the drooping flower is dying. 
Apart it rocks idly for a mission. Dropped into 
the thirsty flower-mouth, it fills a purpose and 
causes it to blush with grateful beauty. How 
does the Divine Inventor solve the physical pro- 
blems involved in its transfer? It is 800 times 
heavier than the surrounding atmosphere. How 
raise it? From the quiver of the sun arrows of 
light are shot into it; it expands 1,300 times its 
original size. Made lighter by expansion, air par- 
ticles get their shoulders under it and lift it into 
cooler altitudes where it condenses into clouds of 



KEFLEXIVE EESULTS OF FOREIGN" MISSIONS. 245 

acres in extent. But how move the clouds over 
the plains ? No human hand can reach them. 
Ho, yonder comes God's fleet, the cloud ships, the 
air currents that have touched at the port of 
Cloudland. Laden with watery stores they are 
scudding along through the upper deep. 

Have you never stood and contemplated that a 
life spent in fruitless regrets and unmanly repin- 
ings is not worthy to be compared with that plod- 
ding, devoted, disinterested man who through 
these same years, in unceasing labor and untold 
privation, is publishing the gos|)el of peace to the 
poor Karens of Burmah ? The world does not yet 
consent to this, but when that better time shall 
come, for which even Gibbon prays, when the 
thirst of military glory will no longer be the vice 
of the most exalted genius, because mankind will 
no longer bestow more liberal applause on their 
destroyers than on their benefactors, then the 
humble American missionary shall outshine the 
imperial Frenchman. The beginning of that 
blessed period is already upon us. David Living- 
stone, who refused to be called by any other title 
than missionary to Africa, is now acknowledged 
on all hands as a prince among men. England 
laid the body of the heroic missionary to rest in 
her historic abbey among her statesmen, her 
divines, her scholars, her patriots, her warriors, 
her kings, as one equally worthy with them all of 
a place in that venerable sepulcher. 



246 REELEXIVE RESULTS OE FOREIGN MISSIONS. 

The men who are gone out from among us as 
missionaries to the heathen, whose names are so 
familiar and so dear to many of us, are not only 
enlarging their labors from year to year, but they 
are growing great with their work and building up 
strong and glorious characters which for us and 
for our children will be a heritage of inestimable 
value. 

4. The spirit of implicit obedience, diligence 
in the discharge of our great commission, and an 
army of saints and martyrs whose influence 
remains to refresh and inspire the Church like the 
streams which flow through the land when the 
clouds that gave them are gone — these are some 
of the reflexive results of the great work for whose 
advancement we are met to-night. Permit me 
now one point of application. I do not presume 
to exhort the " good gray heads " whose presence 
among us is our honor and our joy. But those 
my equals in age and my juniors may suffer the 
word of exhortation. 

You are ambitious, my brethren, to be faithful 
ministers of Jesus Christ and true servants of his 
Church. You desire to live again when you are 
gone, in lives made better by your presence as 
well as yonder in the presence of the Lord. You 
can not render better service to the Church than to 
endear to its heart the cause of missions. It is no 
light and easy task, to be sure. Missions have 
cost us much in money ; they have cost us more in 



KEFLEXIYE EESULTS OF FOREIGN MISSIONS. 247 

the sacrifice of heroic men ; but the great item of 
cost and labor is the awakening of the Church 
to its responsibility for the evangelization of the 
world. 

It does not take half so much either of pains or 
expense to get the heathen to hear the gospel as it 
does to get Christians to send it. We can get the 
money into the hands of the missionaries easy 
enough if we could only get it out of the pockets 
of the brethren at home. 

The beginning of modern missions in England 
is associated with two names of almost equal 
honor. William Carey, planting his Master's 
kingdom in India, plays hardly a nobler part than 
Andrew Fuller, staying at home that he may rally 
the hosts of the Church to Brother Carey's sup- 
port. If we can not all be William Careys, let us 
all at least be Andrew Fullers. But you can not 
stir up the Church by an occasional discourse on 
missions, however eloquent or masterly that may 
be. You must be so filled and charged with the 
spirit of missions that it will leak out and slop 
over in every sermon. 

Fear not to be taunted with riding the mission- 
ary hobby. This hobby goes somewhere, at any 
rate. When you find a hobby that rides you out 
into all the world, set the whole Church on behind 
and let us all take a ride. 

The part assigned to us who take the lead in the 
work of the Church has a noble illustration in 



248 REFLEXIVE RESULTS OF FOREIGN MISSIONS. 

German history. After the campaigns of Napo- 
leon, Prussia, like so many of the kingdoms of 
Europe, lay prostrate and exhausted under the 
blows of her enemy, almost nothing left of her 
but her dogged and dauntless temper and the 
resolve to restore her fallen fortunes. This resolve 
she breathed into the bosom of her school-masters. 
The humiliation of her ancient enemy, the unity 
of the German nations, and the supremacy of 
Prussia, were the lessons taught in her schools. 
And when the fullness of her time came, when 
Napoleon the last and the least essayed the office 
of the first and would-be arbiter and master of 
all Europe, Prussia mustered her forces and led 
them on to easy victory, because under banners, 
in the rank and file of her armies, behind her 
needle guns, was the old German school-master, 
fighting the foes and winning back the liberties of 
his fatherland, restoring her bulwarks and extend- 
ing her boundaries. O pastors and parents^ 
teachers and leaders in Christ's kingdom ! yours is 
the office and the honor to restore the Church its 
ancient ambition of conquest, its apostolic enthu- 
siasm of extension, to raise, to train, to sustain 
the armies that are to plant the standard of the 
cross in the ends of the earth, and establish among 
men that period of glorious promise, " when the 
kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms 
of our Lord and his Christ ; and he shall reign for- 
ever!" 



XXII. 

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LORD'S 

SUPPER. 

And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and brake it; and 
he gave to the disciples, and said, Take, eat ; this is my body. And he took a 
cup, and gave thanks, and gave to them, saying, Drink ye all of it ; for this is 
my blood of the covenant, which is shed for many unto remission of sins. 
But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the "vine, until 
that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom.— Matt. 
26: 26-29. 

The simple and natural manner in which, the 
Lord's Supper was instituted has led some to over- 
look its solemnity and significance. Men are 
accustomed to establish great and permanent in- 
stitutions with great ceremony and conspicuous 
demonstrations. They choose a special occasion 
for the deliverance of the sacred doctrine or rite 
and usher it in with appropriate accompaniments 
and acclamations. But here the Lord's Supper 
comes in so quietly and naturally that it seems 
hardly more than an incident in the celebration of 
the Passover Supper. As a devout Jew Jesus is 
celebrating with the rest of his people that great 
miracle of judgment upon their oppressors and 
mercy upon themselves, the slaughter of the first- 
born of the Egyptians, in which the bondage of 
Israel was broken and their national life and free- 
dom were begun. It was the custom to celebrate 

(249) 



250 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

the Passover by families. It was a family festival? 
a private, rather than a public, celebration. Jesus 
assembles his disciples into an upper room and 
constitutes them his family, presides over them as 
the head and keeps the feast in that familiar man- 
ner to which they were all so well accustomed. 
The Master, as head of the house, commenced 
the holy supper with a blessing or thanksgiving 
prayer ; a cup of wine was then passed around and 
all the company partook ; then followed the bitter 
herbs, usually eaten with a kind of sauce and 
taken in memory of their bitter bondage among 
the heathen ; then the unleavened bread was 
passed, at which time it was the duty of the head 
of the house to explain to the younger members of 
the family the meaning of the Passover institution. 
After this a Psalm was sung ; then the paschal 
lamb was eaten and another cup of wine was 
taken, the supper closing with the chanting of 
another part of the same Psalm. It was at the 
distribution of the unleavened bread, we may sup- 
pose, or, as some think, when the whole supper 
was concluded, that Jesus took the bread, and after 
giving thanks for it took it and gave it to his dis- 
ciples, saying : " Take, eat ; this is my body which 
is broken for you." In like manner, also, the cup 
after they had supped, saying : " This is the new 
covenant in my blood shed for many for the remis- 
sion of sins. Drink ye all of it." Did Jesus 
intend by this action to originate the ordinance of 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. 251 

the Lord's Supper as we now have it and to bind 
its observance on all who should believe on him 
henceforth through all the ages, or was it meant 
simply as a prophecy of his death and an exhorta- 
tion to his disciples that as often as they kept the 
Passover in coming years, they should associate 
the feast with the memory of his martyrdom at 
the hands of his countrymen ? We know how the 
church understood it. They kept the Supper as an 
ordinance which had been delivered to them by 
Christ. They were accustomed to meet together 
on the first day of the week to commemorate the 
Lord's sufferings and death, as we learn not only 
from the inspired record but from the earliest unin- 
spired history of the Church which has come down 
to us. And added to that we have the testimony 
of the Apostle Paul that the obligation to observe 
the Lord's Supper was a part of the revelation 
which was given to him from the presence of the 
Lord. " That which I received of the Lord, I also 
delivered unto you, how that the Lord Jesus in the 
night in which he was betrayed took bread, and 
when he had given thanks for it, broke it and gave 
to his disciples and said, Take, eat ; this do ye in 
remembrance of me. And in like manner also the 
cup." The Lord's Supper is not, therefore, a thing 
of man's device. It is not an expedient of the 
early church; a venerable relic which has come 
down to us from a far-off age, which has therefore 
hallowed associations but no proper authority ; it 



252 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

is not even an apostolic institution. But it pro- 
ceeds from the Lord himself. Even if we knew no 
more about it than this, that Jesus has left it to his 
disciples, all his true followers would find a holy 
delight in keeping it, and would be restrained by 
their regard for him from treating it with negli- 
gence or indifference. A small thing it seems — 
this assembly of believers together and the distri- 
bution of these emblems among them — but when it 
is connected with the dear and worthy name of 
Christ it becomes of sacred and precious signifi- 
cance. The divine origin of the Lord's Supper 
exalts and endears it in the hearts of all the 
faithful. 

I. But the significance of the Lord's Supper 
appears most eminently in its object. And when 
we come to study that object we enter at once upon 
controverted ground. It is stoutly maintained, not 
by Roman Catholics alone, but by many who 
are accounted as good Protestants, that we have 
in the celebration of this holy supper the enact- 
ment of a miracle by which the bread and wine 
become the real body and blood of Christ. These 
tell us that the words, " This is my body " are to 
be taken literally, and so we have here an exhibi- 
tion of the very body in which Christ lived and 
died and the blood which he shed on the cross ; 
that in the consecration of these elements by the 
hands of the officiating priest there is a transfor- 
mation of them into the substance of that body 






253 

and Tblood; and hence in this holy communion 
there is an actual participation in the body and 
blood of the Lord. This doctrine, as I have said, 
is not confined to Romanists, but is held in sub- 
stance by several sects of Protestants, and by 
many in almost every sect. Luther, the pioneer 
and peerless Protestant, did not protest against 
this doctrine of the physical presence of Christ in 
the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper, but 
accepted it heartily and contended for it fiercely. 
It is true he modified it somewhat, calling it con- 
substantiation instead of transubstantiation ; but 
the practical difference between these two is not 
worth considering. Both agree that there is pres- 
ent in the bread and wine the real flesh and blood 
of Christ. This is the rock on which the Lutheran 
reformation split into several pieces. The Swiss 
division of it, under the lead of Zwingli, took 
one view, the French adopted another, while the 
German division held on to the doctrine of their 
leader that there is a real bodily presence of Christ 
in the bread and wine. 

In a famous controversy between Luther and 
Zwingli, the Swiss reformer held that the words, 
" This is my body" are figurative, meaning, u This 
represents my body," while Luther held to the 
literal interpretation. Luther in that dispute com- 
pletely lost his temper and raved like a madman. 
He at length wrote on the table about which they 
were sitting : "Hoc est corpus " (Latin for " this is 



254 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

my body "), and pounding furiously upon it with 
his fist, declared he would die by that sentence. 
There are multitudes of people to-day pounding 
that same text and declaring that if we do not 
interpret it literally and take it word for word just 
as it is, we wrest the Scripture and do violence to 
the word of God. 

Let us see if this charge is true ; if when we say 
the words " this is my body " mean " this repre- 
sents my body," we are explaining away the plain 
sense of Scripture. How would the disciples as 
they recline about the paschal feast in that upper 
room likely understand the words ? Picture the 
scene ; the Master and his disciples celebrating 
the feast together ; in the course of the celebra- 
tion Jesus takes the loaf of unleavened bread in 
his hands, gives thanks for it, breaks it and gives 
it to his disciples, saying, " Take, eat ; this is my 
body, broken for you." How did they interpret 
those solemn words ? Did they suppose a miracle 
was performed with their utterance by which the 
bread was actually transformed into the body of 
Christ; that in the instant of his saying those 
words the bread which he held in his hand became 
of one substance with the hand, so that he could 
say that the bread was as truly his body as the 
hand was his body ? If he had immediately van- 
ished from their presence, as he did afterwards 
from the two disciples at Emmaus, such an inter- 
pretation would have been possible, if not natural. 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. 255 

But as long as he remained palpably and visibly 
with them, such a literal interpretation of his 
words would never enter their minds. They surely 
understood these words, with the act which accom- 
panied them, as a striking prediction of his death 
on the cross, the breaking and tearing of his body 
and the pouring out of his blood, even as the bread 
was now broken and the wine poured out before 
their eyes. 

Moreover, it will be observed that after the wine 
has been called his blood by the Lord, he again 
drops the figurative description of it and calls it 
wine or the fruit of the vine, saying to them : "I 
will not drink of this fruit of the vine till I drink 
it new with you in my Father's kingdom. " Show- 
ing plainly that in calling it his blood he had only 
been using a figure of speech. The argument is 
that by the word of Christ the wine was changed 
into the blood of Christ ; but the answer is that 
after he has said of the cup, " This is the new cov- 
enant in my blood," he speaks of the same cup as 
still wine, or the fruit of the vine, showing that he 
had used before in saying " This is my blood," a 
figurative expression. The expression u This is my 
body," is a symbolic and not a literal expression. 

We ought to be able to see this clearly if we 
will consider that this figurative manner of speak- 
ing was characteristic of our Lord. Remember, 
for instance, when he stood by the lake of Galilee 
and spoke to the assembled multitude in parables. 



256 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

He pointed to a field on the hillside which sloped 
up from the lake, where doubtless at that moment 
a sower was casting seed on the ground, and said, 
" That field is the world." " That seed is the word 
of truth." Then he described how an enemy 
might come in the night time and sow tares upon 
that same ground, and how as they sprang up the 
difference between the tares and the wheat would 
be manifest. Then he explains : the good seed 
are the children of the kingdom ; the tares are the 
children of the wicked one ; the enemy that sowed 
them is the devil, and the harvest is the end of the 
world. We all know what he means and what he 
does not mean. He did not mean that that little 
section of Galilean hillside was the whole world ; 
that the seeds as they fell were so many words of 
truth, or as they sprang up were so many of his 
disciples ; that the young tares were so many lit- 
tle devils; that the malicious man that sowed 
tares in his neighbor's field was the devil himself, 
or that the harvest of that field was the end of 
the world. What he meant was that one is a 
figure of the other ; represents the other. Why 
should we understand him differently when he 
speaks in similar language of the institution of the 
holy supper ? 

The customs of our common speech should teach 
us better. When this beautiful building in which 
we gather to-day was finally planned, one of the 
brethren, whose zeal in the matter ought be had in 



257 

everlasting remembrance, brought the plans around 
for my inspection, saying, as he held up a roll of 
broad sheets before me, " This is our new church." 
I am not bright in matters of architecture. But I 
understood him. I did not suppose that he had 
the new church done up in a paper package and 
carrying it around in his buggy or under his arm ; 
that he was about to spread the whole building 
out on my lap. I am not quick at catching ideas 
that approach so nearly to mathematics, and so he 
had to go over it in detail ; saying this is the base- 
ment, this the infant class room, this the parlors, 
this is the study, this is the audience room and so 
on. But of course I did not take him so literally 
as to think that our new church was simply a 
paper church. I knew he was speaking figurative- 
ly, and meant that this is a likeness of the church; 
this represents the church. And yet when we 
come to interpret the Scriptures we cast away all 
our common sense and begin to grow red in the 
face if any one seeks to gainsay us, reiterating 
that " it means what it says and it says what it 
means," and that any other view of it is a perver- 
sion of the plain word of Scripture. 

Is it not plain, then, that the Lord's Supper is not 
a communication to us of the literal body and 
blood of Christ, but a communication of the re- 
deeming love which was manifest in the breaking 
of that body and the shedding of that blood ? " Do 
this, as oft as ye do it, in remembrance of me." 

17 



258 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

The great purpose of the institution is to make 
us realize by this palpable and significant symbol 
the love of God as revealed in the sending of his 
Son to die, that whosoever believeth in him should 
not perish, but have everlasting life. The mind 
and the heart need this sign in order to appre- 
ciate more truly and deeply the great truth which 
it stands for. The use of such symbols for the 
same end is one of the commonest customs of life. 
You all know by what a significant symbol the 
great services of Washington are commemorated 
to his countrymen. In plying up and down the 
Potomac the steamboats, great and small alike, 
toll their bells as they pass Mount Yernon, to re- 
mind us that here lived and here is laid to his rest 
our great captain and father, Washington. And the 
preservation of that venerable mansion, with the 
steady pilgrimage to it of thousands of his coun- 
trymen, serves to keep in our minds the virtues and 
the counsels of our great chieftain. It may seem 
to some a needless and empty ceremony. But no 
one who witnesses it can fail to realize more fully 
and to feel his emotions of patriotism and grati- 
tude newly and profoundly stirred as he hears 
those tolling bells or beholds with his own eyes 
the home of Washington. The erection of monu- 
ments is for the same purpose. We often lament 
the foolish and prodigal display of marble in our 
cemeteries. And it is a lamentable waste of the 
Lord's money so far as the persons commemorated 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. 259 

are unworthy of their monuments and will soon 
be forgot in spite of their monuments. But in so 
far as the monument is a commemoration of true 
worth, of virtue, of piety, of patriotism, of phil- 
anthropy, of love for God and men ; so far as it 
helps to render these things more memorable and 
honorable ; so far as it brings us to realize our debt 
of gratitude to the benefactors of our race and age, 
it is a most appropriate and praiseworthy memo- 
rial, which not only expresses our appreciation of 
true service and worth, but serves to perpetuate 
the memory of such through coming generations 
and transmit the examples of heroism to children's 
children. " The heroic sacrifice of one single man 
may not only rally a whole wavering host, but 
may even flash like lightning through the cen- 
turies and kindle in a whole nation a flame of holy 
enthusiasm." Such deeds are worthy of commem- 
ration in brass and in marble, and must needs be 
commemorated not only in history, but in signifi- 
cant symbol, that they may be realized by poster- 
ity. 

How fitting, then, that the death of Jesus Christ, 
the capital event in the history of the world, the 
sublimest deed on record, the most beneficent and 
gracious and affecting display of self-sacrifice and 
of redeeming love which has been witnessed in 
this universe, should be commemorated by this 
simple and significant monument, the breaking of 
bread and the pouring of wine, in token of his 



260 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

broken body and his shed blood. The design of 
this supper is not only to express our gratitude for 
his redemption and to confess our obligations to 
serve him continually, but to show forth his death 
to the world ; to proclaim to all who may witness 
it the great importance and meaning of this sacri- 
ficial death and the duty of all to appropriate it 
by faith. Nor can we so fully realize any of these 
things except by a frequent and faithful observ- 
ance of this festival of love. 

III. Suffer one or two points now concerning 
the proper observance of the Lord's Supper ; for 
the apostle warns us against an improper and 
unworthy observance. He tells us that we may 
so observe it as to eat and drink condemnation to 
ourselves ; and that because of a heartless partak- 
ing of the supper many are weak and sick among 
us, and many asleep. Spiritual weakness, illness, 
death, are the results of keeping this feast un- 
worthily. To be truly kept, the Lord's Supper 
mus be kept in faith. We must eat and drink, 
discerning not in the symbols, but through them 
and beyond them, the Lord's body and blood ; the 
Lord's sacrifice and death for our sins. We must 
not see in this bread only a means of satisfying 
our appetite, building up our bodies ; bread and 
nothing more. We must not, as the Corinthians 
did, turn this into a common meal, leaving out of 
view its true import and lesson. Our hearts and 
thoughts must go behind these symbols and be- 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. 261 

yond them to that great fact of atonement and 
redemption which they set forth. That is, we 
must guard against a merely formal observance of 
it and keep it in sincerity and in truth. We must 
see by the eye of faith the Crucified One rising 
out of these emblems and giving his life for his own. 
Then the proper observance of this supper 
requires that we should partake of it with love for 
one another. Let us not deceive ourselves here. 
There can be no true communion of the body and 
blood of Christ in faith unless we commune with 
one another in love. If we truly love Christ we 
must feel our hearts drawn to every one who wears 
his name and his image. We must not love sin in 
any, it is true, not even in our own brethren, but 
we must have in our hearts that charity which 
forgives and covers sins. This unloving spirit 
between brethren is the thing rebuked by the 
apostle in the Corinthians. It had come to be 
so in that church that the poor looked up to the 
rich with envy, and the rich looked down upon the 
poor with scorn. In that state of heart they were 
unworthy to partake of the Lord's Supper. Every 
one who ate and drank in that unworthy spirit ate 
and drank to his own condemnation. Do not miss 
the meaning of this. The idea is not that there is 
some mysterious sanctity about the Lord's Supper 
which makes it wickedness and impiety to ap- 
proach it with an unloving heart, but that the 
plain meaning of this ordinance is such that we 



262 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

can not partake of it in hostility to a fellow Chris- 
tian, in an unforgiving and unloving spirit without 
condemning ourselves in the very act. What do 
we in the celebration of the Lord's Supper? 
We not only proclaim that God forgives us for 
Christ's sake, but that it is, therefore, our duty to 
forgive one another even as God has for Christ's 
sake forgiven us, and so to be imitators of God as 
dear children. Every time we partake of the 
Lord's Supper we formally and solemnly proclaim 
the duty of Christian forbearance and forgiveness. 
But if by the act of participation we make 
formal proclamation of this duty, while in heart 
and in practice we deny it, do we not plainly con- 
demn ourselves in the act? We eat and drink to 
our own condemnation, just as when we read this 
precept of forgiveness in our daily reading of the 
Bible, but refuse to obey it, we read to our con- 
demnation, or when we pray God to forgive our 
sins but refuse to forgive one another, we pray to 
our own condemnation. The doing of one duty 
while repudiating another equally plain and 
equally obligatory, not only can not save us, but 
really adds to our condemnation. We must either 
repudiate all or own all. What we all need is a 
heart so full of love for the Master that every 
unholy affection will be expelled; that we will 
have no room in it for any feeling which offends 
his love. If Christ dwells in us as the hope of 
glory, that blessed hope should " weed all bitter- 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. 263 

ness from our breast. It hath no business where 
he is a guest." The great business and duty with 
us is to be filled with the spirit of Christ so that 
all unworthy feeling will be displaced and we 
shall be able to bring every thought into captivity 
and obedience to him. 



xxm. 
THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. 

For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus 
Christ— l Cor. 3: 11. 

Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always 
abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour 
is not in vain in the Lord.— l Cor. 15: 58. 

No thoughtful observer of the temper and tend- 
ency of the time can fail to discern a considerable 
and increasing sentiment in the church looking to 
some more practical and visible union of Chris- 
tians than at present obtains. But it is very easy, 
especially for those who share this sentiment, to 
exaggerate its strength and growth. Reformers 
are necessarily noisy. They have " to cry aloud 
and spare not " against existing evils. But we 
must not forget that all agitation is not advance, 
and we can not measure the progress of any move- 
ment by the noise which it makes in the world. 
As a matter of fact the friends of Christian union 
are yet a very small minority. The great major- 
ity are either indifferent or hostile to it. And per- 
haps the most immediate service which we can 
render the cause is to bring our minds to a clearer 
apprehension and appreciation of the grounds of 
this hostility and indifference. 

( 264 ) 



THE UNITY OF THE CHI7KCH. 265 

I can think of at least four reasons which in- 
cline the majority of people to look with disap- 
proval upon the agitation of the question of Chris- 
tian union. First, there are those who think the 
existence of the church an evil, though perhaps a 
necessary evil, and therefore it is good policy to 
keep it divided and so keep it weak. If the church 
can not be destroyed, then let it be divided. I do 
not, of course attach great importance to that rea- 
son, and yet it is but just to say that much of the 
opposition to a closer unity of the church origin- 
ates in unbelief and hostility to the very mission 
of the church which is to extend itself over the 
world. Then, secondly, there are those who be- 
lieve that the church is good, but still it is human, 
and hence not to be trusted with too much power. 
It is admitted that the increase of the peace of the 
church would be an increase of its power. But it 
is feared that this increase of power would bring 
such an increase of temptation as the church could 
not withstand. We should be in danger of a re- 
vival of the Inquisition and all the other abomin- 
ations with which the church was cursed in the 
days when its formal unity was greater than at 
present. If I were answering this argument, in- 
stead of stating it simply, I should say that the 
power which the church has abused in time past 
was not the power which came from its true unity, 
the unity of Christians with one another in faith 
and life, but the power which it derived from an 



266 



THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. 



ill-advised and unholy alliance with the state, a 
power which does not properly belong to it. The 
power of persecution did not proceed from the 
unity, but the secularization of the church. The 
Inquisition was a civil court. And inasmuch as 
the plea for Christian unity does not look to the 
unity of church and state, but simply the union of 
Christians with each other, the fear of a misuse of 
the power which unity would bring is evidently 
ill-founded. 

The third reason for hostility to Christian union 
is found in the assertion that we have such a union 
already. There are not wanting not only excellent 
but eminent men, eminent for piety as well as abil- 
ity, who protest warmly, in the face of all our dif- 
ferences and divisions, that the church is one in all 
essential articles of faith, that there is a spiritual 
and substantial unity among us, and that our dif- 
ferences are only superficial and seeming. Conse- 
quently they deplore the union agitation as a case 
of " much ado about nothing." ISTow it is a mat- 
ter of fact and of rejoicing that there remains so 
much substantial unity among Christians ; but 
this, so far from being an argument against a 
closer union, is an argument in its favor. If this 
substantial union is so good a thing, the more we 
have of it the better ; and if we have advanced so 
far in that direction already, that is no reason 
surely why we should call a halt in our approach 
to unity, but rather why we should go on to per- 
fection. 



THE UNITY OF THE CHUECH. 267 

But the statement that we have arrived at sub- 
stantial and essential unity already, and that our 
present divisions are not so much divisions of faith 
as divisions of field and of labor, charitable and 
liberal as it sounds, is simply made in defiance of 
the facts of the case. Everyone knows that we 
do have serious differences and scandalous divis- 
ions among us, that they come to the surface con- 
tinually, that our peace with each other, like that 
of the great powers of Europe, is largely a peace 
of policy rather than principle, that there are 
Christian denominations and Christian pastors in 
the same city that have hardly more dealings with 
each other than Jews and Samaritans, and that in- 
stead of dividing out the field and laboring among 
ourselves on the principle of co-operation in a 
common work, we trench and trespass continually 
on one another's premises, competing and contend- 
ing for supremacy. 

And let it be remembered that the unity for 
which our Lord prayed and for which his apostles 
labored was not simply a spiritual and still less a 
sentimental unity, such as only saints can appre- 
ciate, but it was in some sense an outward and 
obvious unity such as the world could see and be 
so moved by the spectacle as to believe in the 
church's Head and Lord. 

There is this fourth argument against the union 
agitation ; that it is the pursuit of a phantom, the 
following of a forlorn hope, the attempt of the im- 



268 THE UNITY OF THE CHUECH. 

practicable and impossible. When one contem- 
plates the magnitude of our divisions, the hoary 
and venerable traditions which separate us, the 
inveteracy of religious customs and habits of 
thought, the great and honored names which must 
be renounced in some degree if we are ever to be 
one, and most of all when he remembers that sec- 
tarianism does not originate in these divisions, but 
inheres in our human nature and has been rooted 
and grounded in us through generations, it does 
seem a hopeless if not a presumptuous endeavor to 
overthrow all this and build on its ruins one new, 
united, harmonious church, whose one Master is 
Christ and whose one law is that by love all serve 
one another. 

My answer to all this is that truth and time have 
wrought mightier miracles than this ; that faith 
has removed more and greater mountains than 
those which now tower between the children of 
God to obstruct their freedom and their fellowship. 

But by what means is this coming unity to be 
realized? On what broad base is this divided 
church to be united ? Here we come to the parting 
of ways. It behooves each one of us to show his 
opinion with modesty. I suppose it is reasonable 
to say, however, that the means by which the 
church is to be united are the reverse of those by 
which its unity was destroj^ed. Now what were 
the causes of the church's disunity. Mainly two, 
I think: an excess of theology, and a lack of work. 



THE UNITY OF THE CHUHCH. 269 

By no means do I say that a church needs no 
theology, no creed. It were as sensible to say a 
man needs no backbone. But as it takes some- 
thing more than spinal column to make a man, so 
it takes something more tnan theology to make a 
church. And it was because the church forgot this 
and abandoned herself to the sole work of theolo- 
gizing and creed-making and would have nothing 
in heaven or earth not contained in her philosophy 
that she fell into fragments and factions. 

The unity of the church, as I believe, is to come 
through the purifying, simplifying and unifying of 
its theology. Already theology is largely purged 
of its polemic spirit. There is far more tolerance 
for theological differences than there was a gener- 
ation ago; the sects are more tolerant of each 
other, and in each sect there is more liberty of 
opinion than formerly. The proscriptive spirit is 
largely a thing of the past. Theological polemics, 
controversial preaching, religious disputation 
among Christians of different sects — these are 
strange and unheard of things to some of you. 
But it was not always so. If you will take pains 
to ransack the secondhand book stores, you will 
find stored on their shelves some specimen brick- 
bats with which orthodox and heterodox, Calvin- 
ist and Arminian, Baptist and Pedobaptist went 
out to battle in former days. 

We have not ceased to differ about these things, 
but we have learned that some of these differences 



270 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. 

are nofc so great as we supposed, and that none of 
them are to be mended by a polemical and pro- 
scriptive spirit. Not only is theology to be purged 
of a narrow and intolerant spirit, but of all the 
errors and crudities which have been foisted into it 
by the ill-j udged though well-meaning efforts of 
man's wisdom. 

And as it must be purified, so it must be sim- 
plified and unified. And that process is gradually 
going on also. Theology is gradually reconstruct- 
ing itself about the person of Jesus Christ, all 
other articles being subjected to that, every thing 
cast out which conflicts with that, and any liberty 
tolerated which does not • degrade Christ from his 
pre-eminent place in the faith and thought of his 
church. The fault of the systems is that they 
have reckoned from a wrong center. One has made 
divine sovereignty supreme ; another free agency ; 
one the unity, another the mercy of God. What 
we want is one great inclusive truth which will 
contain all these and set them in right relations to 
one another. 

That truth, in the very language of Scripture, is 
this, " Jesus Christ the Son of God ;" " Christ, God 
manifest in the flesh ; " " God in Christ reconcil- 
ing the world unto himself, not imputing their tres- 
passes to them." This is the central, the vital, the 
essential truth. By this the church as founded by 
the apostles was held into one body. Back to this 
we must go, back beyond the creeds, beyond the 



THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. 271 

councils, beyond the Apostles' Creed, to this creed 
of the apostles we must go to find that central 
truth which shall unify theology and so unify the 
church. 

And yet do not let me leave the impression that 
theology, however sound, can save an idle church 
from dissension. The path that leads back to our 
lost unity leads us out also into the field of labor. 
What we need to do is to appreciate the great work 
of the church, the evangelization, civilization and 
Christianization of all classes and nations. The 
mission of the church is the mission of Christ ; "to 
preach the gospel to the poor, to heal the broken 
hearted ; to preach deliverance to the captives and 
recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty 
them that are bruised, to proclaim the acceptable 
year of the Lord." And those who are opening 
the eyes of the church to this work and inducing 
us to engage in it are perhaps doing more for the 
promotion of Christian union than if they spent 
their whole lives in devising and advocating plans 
of union, however excellent. For if only we can 
see the magnitude and the urgency of the Avork 
which waits us on all sides, we shall easily see 
also both the necessity and the means of uniting in 
order to accomplish it. And though our co-op- 
eration be not very close or cordial at first, yet ex- 
perience will come to our aid. If only we will 
walk by the same rule in the things about which 
we have already attained unity, consent to join 



272 THE UxNTTY OF THE CHUKCH. 

hands in the work in which we are already agreed, 
we shall come in due time to that unity of head 
and of heart which can come in no other way. 

Of one thing let us all who labor and pray for 
the unity of Christ's people be fully persuaded, 
that what Grod has promised he is able to perform. 
And he has promised that no labor done in the 
name of his Son, however difficult it may appear 
and how ever long-delayed its results may be, 
shall be done in vain. In due time the fruit 
of all our labors for union will appear. Dr. 
Draper tells us that a sunbeam or a shadow can 
not fall upon a surface, no matter of what mate- 
rial that surface may be, without leaving upon it 
an indelible impression, an impression which by 
the application of the proper chemical agents may 
be made visible. So it is that the least and fee- 
blest endeavor of a true faith in Christ leaves its 
trace and its impress upon the world, which shall 
be made manifest in time to come. No labor is 
lost which love for Christ inspires. Nothing done 
in his name is done in vain. It is only when we 
are without him that we can do nothing ; it is only 
when we labor in our own name that we labor in 
vain. Therefore put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ. 
Take his name for your watchword. Believe in 
him, confess him, obey him and follow him. Com- 
mit thy ways and thy work unto him, and he shall 
bring it to pass. 



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